Direct traffic coming to URLs with /rss_feedIP#
-
I'm doing a site audit for an organization that has a bunch of really messy old Drupal sites. In looking at their traffic, I see that a majority of it is coming to landing pages that look like this:
http://clientsdomain.com/rss_feed173.8.208.97 plus other IP addresses.
The bounce rate is 100% and time on site is less than a second. It looks like something that an RSS feed tool might use, but I've never seen something like it before. It creates its own landing page, hits the site, then appears to bounce. This is making their Analytics data look a whole lot worse than the site is actually doing, since the bounce rate is 100% on all that fake traffic.
I have some experience with Drupal, but I've never seen anything like this in Drupal or any other CMS.
Has anyone out there ever experienced something like this, where direct traffic comes to an rss feed landing page and bounces immediately?
-
Hi Natalie,
What's the RSS plugin that your client's site is using?
-
Hi again
My bad! Did you try checking your internal links or sitemap? A quick crawl with ScreamingFrog can help pinpoint any link issues.
Also did you check the hostname on those links? Does it come up as our domain? Just want to double check that it isn't referral.
Let me know! Good luck!
-
Thanks, Patrick! The strange thing is that this comes as direct traffic, not referral traffic. We've definitely experienced the referral spam phenomenon, but this is like nothing I've ever seen. I don't think it's spam, but I'm not sure how or why it's being created.
I'll filter the landing pages from Analytics, but we're mostly just curious where and why those URLs are being created / hit.
Thanks again.
-
Hi there
This happens time to time - what you can do is create a filter to eliminate this traffic from your GA reporting.
Here's a few great resources:
How to Stop Spam Bots from Ruining Your Analytics Referral Data
What to Do About Fake BS Surge of Google Analytics Visits Definitive Guide to Removing Referral SpamYou could also take the time to go through your backlinks and see if any of them are worth removing or disavowing. Since this is a RSS Feed, it won't be very easy at all, but this is a nice process to have in your back pocket if needed.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Track conversion from paypal express/Apple pay
Hi All, Is there any way to track apple pay conversion or paypal express conversion in Google Analytics? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Has anybody else had unusual /feed crawl errors in GWT on normal url's?
I'm getting crawl error notifications in Google Webmaster tools for pages that do not exist on my sites?! Basically normal URL's with /feed on the end.. http://jobs-transport.co.uk/submit/feed/ http://jobs-transport.co.uk/login/feed Has any body else experienced this problem? I have no idea why this is happening. Simon
Reporting & Analytics | | simmo2350 -
Linked my adwords account to GA and vice versa and still paid search is getting recorded into organic traffic??
Hi Mozzers, I have linked properly my adwords account to GA and vice versa and somehow I can see 3/4 of this paid traffic recorded to organic search. The most confusing part is that I can see 1/4 of the paid traffic under the "paid" metric. At this point I don't know really what should I do? Thank you guys in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
What extra shall we do to increase organic traffic for both the sites?
One of my clients has english language websites targeted for USA and UK audience with some content variations but60%-70% of the content on site remains the same. The site is hosted in USA. One is hosted on brandname.co.uk and one is on brandname.com. The precuations that we have already taken to save it from being marked duplicates are: 1. used rel=alternate element for all product detail pages2. currency in both the sites are different that is GBP and USD3. have tried to differenttate the product by using different product specific terms like Publishing Year: vis a vis published in:Author Vis a vis Written byFormat vis a vis binding type Add to cart vis a vis add to basket and so on What remains the same: 1. Title structure 2. Description 3. Product Name 4. About the product text
Reporting & Analytics | | CyrilWilson0 -
Ideas for a strange surge in direct traffic
Being the type of person that can't stop checking my Google Analytics, I noticed this morning that between the hours of 12 and 2 central time last night I recieved a strange surge of direct traffic. My site typically gets around 40 direct visits per day (most of them coming during peak hours around the time people are getting off of work). I received 150 direct visits during this random time in the middle of the night. My bounce rate soared as almost every visit was a bounce. The visitors locations are spread out as if it is natural human traffic. Every single one of the visitors is using a chrome browser. Has anyone else run into something like this? All I can think of is that someone might have an addon or toolbar for chrome that linked to my site for a while in a way that caused unsuspecting visitors to end up on my page. For now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the traffic doesn't return, as it could be bad news for my Adsense. *Edit: Also of particular interest, each direct visit went to an internal page on my site and no two of the 150 visits went to the same internal page. I also added an image showing a normal complete day's direct traffic and my direct traffic for today so far (The bulk of the surge came yesterday but the shot from today illustrates the surge better because it is missing my naturally daily direct traffic that comes in the afternoon) heXFb#LiiEr
Reporting & Analytics | | pattersonla0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments don't deliver 50/50?
Our A/B test is actually delivering at about a 70/30 page view rate. 70% in favor of the original version and only 30% of the new. We are sending 100% of our traffic to this homepage test. Has anyone else experienced this? There seems to be a lot of folks experiencing this.....anyone know why?
Reporting & Analytics | | VistageSEO0 -
How do I find backlinks and/or SERPs for a subdomain
I realize this is probably a very basic question but if I want to find backlinks to a sub-domain of my site, how would I do that? Also, if I wanted to see what search terms were bringing traffic to one specific page of my site, how would I do that?
Reporting & Analytics | | aarnswife0 -
Has Anyone Else Noticed A Jump In Google Analytics Traffic Since Session Parameters Were Changed?
Ever since Google Analytics changed their session parameters August 12th I have seen a 20% jump in organic traffic & bounce rates along with a decline in pages/visit and conversion rate. To be clear, I don't put a whole heck of a lot of stock in these metrics as stand-alone indications of how my site is performing. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this blip. I noticed some other people mentioned a similar phenomenon in other SEO forums and blog comments, but nobody seems to be talking about this here at SEOMoz (unless I just haven't looked in the right place). I'm not saying the change I noticed has anything to do with the session update, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar so that I can either cross it off the list of possible causes or explore further.
Reporting & Analytics | | eTundra0