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How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?
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Hey Moz,
I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced.
I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction.
I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website.
Nicer than most design/content.
They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here.
The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April.
Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough.
Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds.
There is no way that the traffic is real.
It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me.
How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?
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Hi James! Did Luke's resource help? Do you still need some help?
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Thanks for the link. I will check it!
- James
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Hi James,
I recently came across this blog that has several different solutions to solving spam on Google over on Optimize Smart. It covers so many different kinds of spam it may be of some help. It's mainly Referral but does touch on Organic.
Hope you find what you need,
Luke
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