Huge Spike in Direct Traffic from IE7
-
Our site is seeing a huge spike in direct (none) traffic from IE 7 from July 8, 2014 - on. June 25 - July 7 showed 21 direct visits from IE 7; July 8 - July 20 is showing 5,889 (an increase of 27,943%). All traffic from the spike is going to our homepage.
Other Google Analytics' stats for this direct (none) IE 7 traffic:
Bounce Rate: 99.52%
Avg. Session Duration: 0:02
Pages/session: 1.01
Mostly all new usersWhat's strange is that the traffic is from a variety of cities and networks. What could be causing this? Has anyone experienced this before?
-
We have removed all of our adroll code - and seeing it start up as well.
-
I'm seeing a few reports on that in the comments of the SER piece at http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html, too.
-
Looks like the traffic has returned ...
-
Seeing the same thing from July 8th onwards for both companies, and both use/have used Adroll.
-
Adding a fresh reply here so people get notified in their inboxes (editing a previous reply doesn't generate a new email).
This is a problem with AdRoll and Perfect Audience, and both are aware of the problem (and invite you to contact them with any issues regarding your account). An update post is at http://www.seroundtable.com/adroll-invalid-traffic-18922.html
-
We saw the same significant drop yesterday, too. There have been some links to AdRoll and Perfect Audience mentioned in the comments sections of http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html. Both of those companies have made a response in the comments too.
-
Interestingly enough - today the # of these visits drastically decreased for some of our clients. Not totally gone, but significantly lower. Anyone else see something similar?
-
We're experiencing the same issue starting around the same time and ongoing. Seems to have happened in the past from what I've read but no one seems to have answers.
-
Keri - thank you so much for the update - I hope that Barry can all get an answer quickly!
-
Lots of people are seeing this at the moment. Still no reason has been identified, but you're not alone. Barry has a few more details on SER at http://www.seroundtable.com/direct-traffic-ie7-analytics-18897.html.
-
We have a client who is also experiencing the same thing - it looks like that this is happening to a lot of people now and in the past checkout:
and
https://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/detail?id=138
I can't seem to find a solution. The closest thing is setting up a filter like here: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/09/05/filter-bots-google-analytics/#sr=g&m=o&cp=or&ct=-tmc&st=(opu qspwjefe)&ts=1406181439 however, the service providers in GA are all generic.
Does anyone else have a solution?
-
I'm seeing the same direct traffic spike in IE 7.0. 1500 visitors/day. No clue why.
-
Thank so much! I think I will try CloudFlare out.
-
ADROLL is the one to blame: http://www.seroundtable.com/adroll-invalid-traffic-18922.html
If it isn't messing with your server services and just spiking in Analytics, I would just let it there and enjoy the (probably fake) traffic.
As there's actually no referrer and nothing tiding that traffic to a source, there's not much you can do aside of blocking some IPs.
You can also test-drive CloudFlare (very easy to setup, and free) which filter fake traffic (among other benefits) using known IP addresses and browser integrity checks prior to send the hit to your server.
-
Thanks for your response.
There isn't a specific location and/or network that stands out, which is really strange.
AT&T is up 14,050%, Time Warner is up 2,300%, Comcast is up 18,600% (all for direct IE 7 traffic).
California, Texas, Florida are all showing large jumps for IE 7 direct traffic, with CA being the largest. That's not surprising since we're a CA college system, but we're also not seeing a specific city responsible for the spike. It's spread out across LA, Fresno, Bakersfield, etc.
-
What location is it coming from? Sometimes you'll get a ton of traffic all from the same spot, and it winds up being some kind of bot or spam that's getting picked up. I'd check the network too.
-Adam
-
Thanks for the response.
I checked with my team, and to their recollection, nobody ordered a campaign that would have caused this. Our webmaster is reporting no server damage, either.
-
Have you signed up for any traffic exchange, affiliate program or similar? Purchased a service on fiverr or similar?
If those hits are not causing any damage to your server, then just ignore it... If it is causing damage, you might be a victim of a DDoS attack...
First, make sure you haven't ordered a service that results in that traffic, we'll go from there.
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
-
Organic search traffic down 60% since 8/1/18\. What now?
I have a small health & fitness blog, and my Google search traffic suddenly dropped 60% around August 1 (I've attempted to link an image). My rank has dropped for 86 keywords. I have no manual penalty, so I'm guessing I was affected by the algorithm change. My technical skills are VERY limited. I've tried to find answers on my own, but every time I try to "fix" something, I only seem to make it worse. I do seem to have some structural/performance issues with my site (e.g., lots of 404 errors from uninstalled plugins and unwanted permalinks). I asked my server for assistance (I used managed Wordpress hosting), and they said they couldn't help. As you can imagine, this is quite devastating, and I have no clue where to go from here. I don't know if I'm allowed to link to my site here, but it's mommyrunsit dot com. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks. Sharon 0lPu4wY
Reporting & Analytics | | RoniFaida1 -
Web traffic in steady decline since launching responsive design in July
The launch of the responsive design is the only event we can correlate to the beginning of the decline in overall visits to the website since July, however we're not sure if this is the issue. To give you some background, the website http://www.precisionpestcontrol.com.au/ is a pest control site in a highly competitive industry where there are many black hat tactics going on with huge keyword competition on a small range of keywords, however historically the website traffic for the above site has been gaining momentum. We create/ update 2 or 3 pages every month with rich content and post 8 blogs every month on pest control related topics. We have done the initial keyword research and all the keywords we used are medium to high volume terms. We don't do any black hat tactics or dodgy link building, we have invested time submitting the site to legitimate business listings in the past. It just seems strange that all of a sudden we go responsive and start to lose searchengine traffic. Possible Issues What we've been able to find so far were some pages that were not redirected properly, probably about 5, and 2 pages that seemed to lead to a 404 error. These have only just been fixed recently, otherwise the mobile site has been functioning effectively. Could this be the reason we have been in decline over the past few months? We also seem to have lost a whole lot of external links somehow, the external link measurement in MOZ has gone from 1500, up to 6,000 then down to 300 or so in the space of a few months. Basically we're trying to figure out what we're doing wrong, or what we can do to try and stop the decline of visits. We've checked the algorithm updates and don't think that Panda or the shift to the Google AI would have penalised us, but then again we could be wrong. Any advice anyone could offer would be hugely appreciated. Happy to provide any data for anyone to have a look at.
Reporting & Analytics | | Peter.Huxley590 -
Free Media Site / High Traffic / Low Engagement / Strategies and Questions
Hi, Imagine a site "mediapalooza dot com" where the only thing you do there is view free media. Yet Google Analytics is showing the average view of a media page is about a minute; where the average length of media is 20 - 90 minutes. And imagine that most of this media is "classic" and that it is generally not available elsewhere. Note also that the site ranks terribly in Google, despite having decent Domain Authority (in the high 30's), Page Authority in the mid 40's and a great site and otherwise quite active international user base with page views in the tens of thousands per month. Is it possible that GA is not tracking engagement (time on site) correctly? Even accounting for the imperfect method of GA that measures "next key pressed" as a way to terminate the page as a way to measure time on page, our stats are truly abysmal, in the tenths of a percentage point of time measured when compared with actual time we think the pages are being used. If so, will getting engagement tracking to more accurately measure time on specif pages and site signal Google that this site is actually more important than current ranking indicates? There's lots of discussion about "dwell time" as this relates to ranking, and I'm postulating that if we can show Google that we have extremely good engagement instead of the super low stats that we are reporting now, then we might get a boost in ranking. Am I crazy? Has anyone got any data that proves or disproves this theory? as I write this out, I detect many issues - let's have a discussion on what else might be happening here. We already know that low engagement = low ranking. Will fixing GA to show true engagement have any noticeable impact on ranking? Can't wait to see what the MOZZERS think of this!
Reporting & Analytics | | seo_plus0 -
More Traffic From Lower Rankings?
I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1 (rankings according to multiple SEO tools as well as my own browser). How is this possible?
Reporting & Analytics | | JABacchetta0 -
Senuke and traffic generator program is a good idea?? I think i got some problems now.
First of all thanks for reading, especially if you are the one whose bright ideas will help me out:) I started using senuke xcr about 3 months ago, obviously at the beginning i didnt make much success(not like I do now). Later i bought that inferno thingy and it actually works. First 2 weeks didnt make much difference(although i could see some little but stable uprising) but after 4th week ended, the average impression and queries doubled up, 6th went up again, its like every week or two it jumps up and keeps it there. Also the actual traffic from keywords went up! When about the second week finished, i started using a traffic generator program, first it leveled out the impressions and seemed to help a bit. Lately i think it messed it all up, plus about 2 weeks ago there was 2-3 dayswhen i sent a bit more traffic than usual and around that time the average rising of impressions didnt happened, it might even went down. Now i stopped using traffic g. and everything stayed the same no improvement!! Anyone could help me? I need to get it moving up again! Also im still nowhere near the top as the keywords are competitive well at least for me. What do i do wrong and what should i do? Also what about traffic generator? ps is it safe or/and or allowed to write that? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Sugafree0 -
When will traffic data be working ? also whats with the spike in duplicate listing issues with everyone.
Hi There, We have no traffic data, is this something we are doing wrong or is this an issue with SEOMOZ ? Also duplicate listings have gone sky high, check goggle analytics's and all ok ? Any answers ? Thanks Charlie
Reporting & Analytics | | pro580 -
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 -
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