Strange Traffic Spike In Google Analytics

[davidwaring]

Over the last two days I have seen a huge spike in the pageviews to my site www.learnbonds.com.  Up to this point my average page views per visit has been less than 2.  For the last couple of days it has jumped to 5 but the average time on the site has not increased.  Upon further investigation under the browser and OS page of google analytics I found that traffic coming from internet explorer and IE with Chrome Frame is reporting 10+ pageviews per visit.  Below is a screenshot.  Any insight into what might be causing this and how to fix it that the community can provide would be appreciated. Thanks
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[Christy-Correll]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the update. I'll keep this question open for a while in case this issue resurfaces. Best of luck!

Christy

[davidwaring]

Hi Christey,

The problem happened for a few days but then went away.  Never found out what the issue was.

Best Regards,
Dave

[Christy-Correll]

Hi David, we'd love an update on this!

[ThompsonPaul]

Still working on this issue, David?

While it is really strange behaviour, it's unlikely to be ordinary bots causing this kind of spike, as very very few bots (like the form/comment spammers Ricky mentions) actually process JavaScript. Therefore they wouldn't trigger Analytics.

You've done well to narrow down the traffic to a specific and unusual browser combination. Now, what does your Analytics tell you about the Source of the visits? By this, I mean both the web source (referral from a particular site, direct, social etc) and the geographic location?

Curious to know more...

Paul

[ShaunPhilips]

Good day dave, I have also noticed a sudden rise in traffic and page views, which have been rather constant in the past two years....

[RickyShockley]

Hey Dave, strange. Not sure what would cause a disparity like that with the only variable being browser used. I don't know if we have enough data to help you here. Do you have more historical data? Is your IE traffic generally higher quality? Another thought is that it may be bots looking for forms/comment sections of your site for SEO spam. Did you also see a spike in spam submission forms?