Direct Traffic Spike
-
In February, I transferred an HTML site to a WordPress Platform. Since then, Direct traffic has spiked to nearly 400% since the WordPress transition. The Direct traffic spike took roughly 2 months before it started to kick in. Does anyone know what this could be attributed to?
-
The re-directs may have been the issue...will report back when I can see a trend. Thanks for the help!
-
Hi Steve
Direct traffic which 404's should not trigger any sort of hit. They could be coming from a variety of places: old links, bookmarks, browser history, emails, social shares etc. Your best bet if you want to retain any traffic value there is to 301 them to relevant pages if possible.
-Dan
-
That may have helped. We changed some of the page names to more relevant and descriptive pagenames. Alot of our landing pages are 404 when I look at the Direct Traffic now. Would that trigger a Direct Traffic hit somehow? Those should still be referrals from old links...right? Even then, the 404 direct hits don't make up for the difference. Direct traffic for the homepage is up significantly too.
-
In addition to some of the other suggestions, I would suggest segmenting your traffic even more. Is there any other common denominator? Mobile vs Desktop? Certain landing pages? Location? etc...
Also, it's not a typical looking glitch, which shoots straight up and stays there, the direct traffic takes some dips etc - what's happening there? Can you segment anything about the direct traffic during those dips etc?
-Dan
-
Is this consistent with scrapers and feed grabbers? I launched the site in mid february. The direct traffic didn't really kick in until a month or two after. The previous site was a straight .HTML site that I built. The new one is a WordPress site.
http://www.screencast.com/t/ETME6FbDhvz
I would like to think that the traffic is good. But if it is effecting the security or organic traffic in any way, I need to fix it. My organic traffic started to sink after the WordPress switch as well.
http://www.screencast.com/t/dJ0Oeyma5Xs
Any thoughts are appreciated.
-
Egol,
In my experience, scrapers and feedgrabbers are usually server-side scripts that won't register in Google Analytics because they won't have Javascript enabled.
Of course - the server logs will definitely show scrapers.
-
EGOL has a good point about the scrapers.
One thing I would like to mention about Wordpress is to pay attention to your spikes. Below is a link to my personal sites stats.
http://screencast.com/t/eJ6pFjg2BkFj
Now, I am going to show you the daily for july.
http://screencast.com/t/neiHXyj6ck
Now, here is the break down where you can see the most requested page.
http://screencast.com/t/pMT1tKpJOpO
Look how the numbers are skewed. I only change content on this site like 2 times a month. But the second most requested page is the admin page. I have noticed here lately that there are some new bots running and they are nailing the admin pages of WP.
With WP being the most used platform on the internet, it is like Windows when it comes to people looking for exploits to it. I would suggest using a Wordpress security plugin. I cannot really recommend any, I haven't used one myself. What I tend to do is just disable the login by renaming the file with an extension of .php_ then it will 404 all requests. This can be a viable option if you manage the sites totally and do not have clients that want to login to them, like in my case. If not I would look for a WP security plugin recommendation.
-
Scrapers and feedgrabbers.
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
-
Whats (Other) traffic in Google Analytics?
When I look through all our clients, a few are receiving the majority of their traffic from (other). [ Acquisition > Channels > (Other) ]. The only option in (other) is "website" or "offline", whatever that may be. And even weirder, the avg session duration is 0:00. Any idea what this may be?
Reporting & Analytics | | W2GITeam0 -
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 -
How do I find out where my "direct traffic" came from?
Last weekend we had a significant rise in traffic to our site. Digging in to Google Analytics, most of it has come from the USA, with some from Canada, Australia and a few other countries. It has all gone to the same article on our website. I have also found that it has mostly come from Safari (in app), on an ipad and iphone. Google Analytics has put this down as Direct traffic. My feeling is that it is not. Could it be from a social media app - perhaps someone with many followers has pinned from our site, or something along these lines. Could it actually be organic search traffic and Google misattributing it as Direct? Bounce rate and time on site is fine, so I don't think it's a bot / spam.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd
Any ideas / places I could go to help me find out would be appreciated, thank you. Joss0 -
Spike in Direct visits with Drop in Google Organic Visits
Does anyone have an explanation for why Google organic visits plummeted while direct visits rose the same amount. Total visits have been very normal. jI1Bn2B,UuzONNK kepV0eu
Reporting & Analytics | | phogan0 -
Re-classifying a Traffic Source in Google Analytics
Hey All, I think it's inside of the Admin section of Google Analytics, right now I have a traffic source from the domain of indeed.ca that is being classified as Organic traffic when it should be classified as referring traffic, how can I tell Google Analytics that all traffic from this source should be classified as referral traffic and not organic traffic? Furthermore, after I make this change, will Google Analytics re-classify my past data so I can do a proper analysis? I can't remember how to do this and any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt1 -
Strange Traffic / Viewed content in Analytics
Hi Im looking at the content viewed in December for a clients site and there's a high number of page views for some non-existent pages which received multiple hits eg. domain.com/dr-capability/ with 241 page views (54 unique page views) How can you have multiple page views (and many unique page views) for pages that don't exist ? Is it possible page is being generated automatically or something ? if so how come ? Any ideas as to whats causing this much appreciated ? All Best Dan ps - also many above average home page views
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Google Direct Traffic Reporting for Mobile on Analytics
We noticed a significant drop in our direct traffic in Google Analytics for mobile on July 30th but all our other traffic remains the same. What is the possible cause of this?
Reporting & Analytics | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?
I monitor about 10 websites in GA. Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle. I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%. Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year? In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".
Reporting & Analytics | | bradwayland0