Recent large spike in traffic from same location?
-
Since May 21st our site is showing via Google Analytics a large spike in traffic to our home page. The traffic increase is 4-5 times our average. I was able to track the source to the same town we are headquartered. We have lost 4 spots for our top keyword. We went from 7 to 11 in Google in this time period. I understand it could be related to Penguin. But I also suspect this issue is negatively effecting ranking by increasing bounce rate and decreasing pages per visit and time on site.
Before/After May 21st
Returning Visitors: 52% / 23%
New Visitors: 48% / 77%
Pages per Visit: 12.4 / 5.44
Duration of visit Avg: 10.23 / 4.22
I would greatly appreciate any ideas on the cause of this issue. Also any input on the above metrics and sudden lost in a couple spots in SERP.
Thanks.
-
Google has says that they do not use GA for rankings or for search quality. Here's a video from Matt Cutts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU.
-
We did find that the IP's hitting the home page for a second were coming from our IP block. I am going to set up a filter in GA. My concern becomes Google's use of user metrics like dwell time. If I block on GA will that still hurt my user metrics in the eyes of search engine rankings. Is Google looking at my GA with filters or are they looking at raw data which would still include the false visits from our server?
-
As I understood, all the visits are direct to his home page. From the data he wrote it seems that a person is deleting all his history every time before visiting the website.
Before/After May 21st
Returning Visitors: 52% / 23% / New Visitors: 48% / 77% (more new visitors - or more of the same visitor deleting his cookies))
Pages per Visit: 12.4 / 5.44 (an increase of single page visits would lead to a sitewide decrease in pages per visit) Duration of visit Avg: 10.23 / 4.22 (decreasing the average visit duration with 6.01 minutes could mean the visits are extremely fast). Maybe I am wrong, but it could be an automated tool - what do you think @Keri Morgret?
@Devon - you should check also if GA is installed properly. The Asynchronous code must be before the ending tag of the head section - so before and before any other javascript. So just make sure your GA tracking code is the last code in the head section of your website.
-
Are they all one page per visit? Are they all visiting a different page each time?
It's been several years, but I had something like this happen to me. Had 50+ visits all coming from the same city, all direct traffic, all with a single page per visit. I happened to have another analytics package on the site at the time, and saw that it was the same IP and actually one user visiting 50+ pages. For some reason, GA though they were different people.
If you look at some of the technology reports in GA, you might look to see if they have the exact same browser resolution, flash version, etc. That may help indicate if it's actually one computer that has some settings that are making GA think it is separate visits.
-
You can block the IP once you identify it - both from visiting your website and from Analytics tracking if you want, but I wouldn't worry too much. Besides inflating your data in GA, it can't have a negative impact on your website. If the problem continues just analyze your visitors experience at traffic level - organic, referrals and social. Did you exclude your own Ip from Ga tracking?
-
It is a well known network in our area. Cox communications.
-
Is the Network branded - for example from a company? Check the name of the network and if it's not a well known internet provider and it's a name from a company instead it means someone from that company keeps visiting your website (either manually or using a tool) - and you can get in touch with them - see if it's a competitor, etc
-
Thanks for the response.
It is Direct traffic coming from the same network. It also looks like it is using Chrome as the browser.
-
Did you also check to see if the visits come from the same network? Are all of those visits direct, organic or referral? since you said they were all to your home page. Only user behavior from organic traffic can affect your rankings and since you lost only 4 spots, it's not the Penguin update. In case the traffic is organic, check the keyword report to see which keywords started to bring you more traffic - maybe you actually rank better for those.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to protect the site from fake traffic
How to protect the site from fake traffic On Google Analytic there are no visits, but on the front of the site there are 6000 jetpack wordpress statistique https://arabtechnologie.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | BELGHOUL0 -
How to see organic traffic trend in GA?
Hi Guys, I want to identify whether organic landing pages in Google Analytics month on month (over 6 month period) have increased or decreased in traffic and whether the traffic trend is positive or negative. See attachment of the data. In total there are 500 pages, so it's just not feasible to review each organic chart for each organic landing page to view the trend. I’m sure there is some way to view this in Google Analytics, but just not sure how. Any suggestions? Cheers. 0Bnv85G.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts140 -
Direct traffic spam on Google Analytics: how can you identify and filter it?
One of my smaller clients noticed a huge jump in direct traffic visits last month. The bounce rate was around 97% so I'm pretty certain that most of the traffic was illegitimate. I know how to filter out spam referrals and organic keywords in Google Analytics. However I'm not sure what to do about direct traffic spam. Are there recommendations for filtering this out? Can I identify spam IP addresses?
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
In Google Analytics, what is the correct format for excluding traffic from single IP address?
In the past, when we've setup a filter to exclude a single IP address, we just entered the IP address normally. For example, 64.68.82.164. However, I was researching how to exclude a range of IP addresses and found out that I might be using the wrong format to filter a single IP address. Is it supposed to be 64.68.82.164 or 64.68.82.164? Will it still work if it was entered without the escape characters? Thanks in advance Moz community for your assistance!
Reporting & Analytics | | peteboyd0 -
Google analytics : exclude traffic to a subdomain
Hi, I have a website with a client access on a subdomain. I want to exclude the traffic to that subdomain because it messes up my conversion goal for the main site. Per example, 2 out of 10 visitors are existing clients that want to access to my SaaS product. The 8 other are potential clients. I want to exclude the 2 clients from my stats so I could have the good conversion percentage for my free trial for the other 8 potential clients. Thanks in advance for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | slestage0 -
Help! Organic traffic decreased 75%.
Hi all, I've had fairly steady organic traffic to my website (www.toptienmobiel.nl) for the last 2 years. Since the beginning of march however I've noticed that the organic traffic was decreasing. Up until now my total organic traffic has decreased to about a quarter of what it was. It doesn't seem to be a penalty, since I still have most of my important keywords on the first page. They've decreased significantly though, mostly from the top 3 to 7+ position. Any idea on what may have been the reason for this sudden decrease? My link profile is still natural and I haven't done anything radical to the website concerning the backlinks or on-page elements. Could it be an algorithmic (Panda / Penguin) update? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | samerhadionline0 -
Google Analytics - Referral Traffic Question
How Google Analytics determine that some particular web site referred traffic if there is no back link on that site?
Reporting & Analytics | | DiamondJewelryEmpire1 -
Overall site traffic - 3 quick questions
3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings? So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses. This forum is great!
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseninja0