Spike then Drop in Direct Traffic?

[HB17]

We've been doing some SEO work over the last few weeks and earlier this week we saw a large spike in traffic. Yay we all thought, but then yesterday the traffic levels returned to pre-celebratory levels.

I've been doing some digging to try and find out what was different Monday and Tuesday this week. Mondays are usually big traffic days for us anyway, but this week was by far the biggest, and Tuesday was even higher still, our best day ever.

After some poking, I found that the direct traffic followed the same pattern as our overall traffic levels (image attached). The first spike coincides with an email we sent out that day, but the later spike we just don't know where it came from?

I understand loosely that direct isn't easily traceable, but can anyone help us understand more about this second spike?

Thanks!

ayqL2wi

[Carloseo]

You might want to check if you have spam in your reports, especially this referral free-social-buttons. This referral spam hits with direct visit along with the referral part.

The problem of this spam over others is that even if you filter the referral you will keep getting the fake direct visits, but luckily there is a solution, if you check the hostname that these direct visits use you will see that is not set or it's fake as any Ghost Spam in Google Analytic, so they way to stop this type of spam in any form(referral, keyword or direct) is to create a valid hostname filter that will only allow valid traffic. You can check full details of this issue in this article:

http://www.ohow.co/unusual-increase-in-direct-traffic-on-ga-spam/

[HB17]

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for responding.

We found it was from Miami after some digging around in Analytics and sorting by location.

No drop in traffic organically, just our usual organic combined with direct gives us a huge spike, but direct from Miami isn't much use for us!

[KyleEaves]

I seem to have the same issue on my site. I get a sudden influx of visitors within minutes all coming from direct traffic. How did you discover the traffic was from Miami? The only identifying factor I could find in GA was that the Network Domain for the traffic was 1e100.net. Not sure how sending direct traffic would benefit a spammer.

Have you experienced an overall drop in traffic on days you get the huge spike in direct traffic? I feel like I do, maybe the high bounce rate is a problem and signal to Google?

Would be nice to block the traffic but possibly just filter it from GA to avoid skewed data if it is not affecting your site.

[HB17]

Ok, so I've been doing some digging and I've found the cause, just not the answer.

The additional traffic came in at 9am from Miami... Our website has nothing to do with Miami and 9am would be 3am local time.

It still doesn't look like anything spammy but still, where can I go from here to find the cause of Miami traffic coming to our site?

Thanks!

[ATP]

With it being over a week since your email was sent I don't think the two events are related, the pattern we see from our emails see an initial spike and a much smaller spike the Monday of the following week due to out of offices etc.

If your certain its direct traffic then I would be investigating further with analytics. The spike is at a time you normally experience spikes, is this coincidence or a pattern?

In our marketing department we try to paint a picture of our direct traffic users.

Which page are they landing on, what are they doing, where is the user located, are the visits resulting in more bookings/services being orders. Then consider external factors which may cause people to go looking more.

For example, one company I work with here in the UK see a jump in direct traffic correlating with the end of the financial year and tax refunds.

As SMG said, Behaviour and Acquisition tabs are your friend. Sorry its not more of an "answer" but direct traffic can be vague.

[HB17]

Thank you for your reply.

Apologies, here's some more info:

Our increase in traffic overall was much higher than normal, but in Analytics when we view just direct, this seems to be the cause of the additional traffic. Organic did not spike.

It is a website for a car dealership containing many brands. The website is fairly large, around 1,000 pages with another 1,000 used cars which are fed in every morning with updates (cars sold, new cars added etc).

Mondays are normally busy days as customers like to book test drives/services etc ready for the following weekend.

Thank you.

[ATP]

Harry, Could you provide a little more info/clarify a few things?

You stated that your direct traffic on the spike day followed the same overall pattern as a normal day etc... but you haven't clarified if the spike was all direct traffic.

Was this spike definitely direct traffic?

Also I think its beneficial for us to know (so we can look at factors that might influence direct traffic)
What Industry / Type of website is it?
Why  are Mondays normally big traffic days?

[HB17]

Thanks for your reply Jimmy.

We didn't send any emails out on our second spike, which is why we're confused.

The landing pages don't look any different from what we'd expect day-to-day - Nothing that really stands out.

Thanks

[DSM_UK]

Hi there,

To get a better idea of your traffic you really need to dig into the Acquisition and Behaviour tabs in Google Analytics.
If you are saying it was a mystery spike in direct traffic, have you checked what the landing pages are? Google translates and the web archive can appear in direct traffic, but are distinguishable from their landing pages.

Did you check that traffic from your email was being reported correctly? Sometimes email can be seen as direct traffic if the email doesn't report the referral, so it is worth checking.

Hopefully this gives you a starting point for further investigation!

King Regards

Jimmy