Seeing massive spikes in direct traffic with 100% bounce rates
-
Hi all,
Looking through Analytics yesterday, I saw that my website had a huge increase in direct traffic in sessions. However, they apparently spent 0 seconds on the website in total so that raised plenty of red flags.
Does anyone have reasons why this might be? Spam or bug?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hey
Could be web crawlers and othet bots. You can jump in and take a look for yourself:
In GA, click on the Audience Tab, then Technology, then Network.
This will then list all of the ISPs that have visited your site. I'm pretty confident that you will find the culprit in there.
Now, if you're thinking - this is skewing my reporting, I don't want it in there - you can block that referrer in your GA report. Here's how you do it:
First - always make sure you keep an unfiltered version, just in case something goes wrong.
In your filtered view, go to the Admin Tab, select the view you want to edit, and then click on filters.
Click "add a new filter", then add a new filter like this:
http://i.imgur.com/6WBhyJA.jpg
Here, I am blocking Google's crawler. To block any other, all you'd need to do is to take the service provider name that you find in the technology -> network report and add it into that filter field (the brackets and ^ icon make it an exact match filter). You can verify the filter before you apply it, and from therein that ISP will be removed from your report. It won't retrospectively apply the filter, however.
Hope this helps.
Tom
-
You can go to
Acquisition>referralsto find out where they might be coming from.I can imagine a lot of the visits are from GA code ghosting which is from sites like free-share-buttons.com etc. these can be filtered out of your reports etc. if it bugs you. Its a bit of a problem of late and bugs the heck out of me. Let me know if it is a lot of spammy looking referrals
-
Hi Whittie,
The unusual spike on direct visits is most likely because of ghost spam, check your referrals and see if you see free-social-buttons or something similar (there might be others), this spammer has been hitting with fake direct visits along with the referral. To be sure this is spam go to:
Acquisition > Channels > All traffic > Select Hostname as a second dimension
You will probably see a fake hostname or not set. Also, if you check the landing page they will be "/" and the page title "Home Page" instead of the title of your real home page.
The problem with conventional methods of stopping spam is that they will just take care of the referral part. The best solution for ghost spam is to use a filter that includes only your hostnames. This will stop ghost spam in any form referral, organic, page and even the fake direct visits.
You can read this article for details about this specific issue and the valid hostname filter.
http://www.ohow.co/unusual-increase-in-direct-traffic-on-ga-spam/
Hope it helps,
Whittie
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 traffic down
My 15 or so clients have all seen a drop in organic traffic by about 20% on GA4 for April. Rankings have not dropped or anything like that - so just wondering if anyone else has had similar?
Reporting & Analytics | | Contentcoms1 -
50% Drop in ALL Traffic Post June Update
We've had 50% drop in Google and Direct traffic post June Google update. Why would direct suddenly plummet as well? Could it be something with Google tag manager or our new cookie policy and cookie management system? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am a disabled person and trying to figure out what is going on with our site
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseninja0 -
Bounce Rate Reduce day by day? how?
Hi, I have implemented enhance ecommerce with tag manager after that all working fine but bounce rate suddenly started reducing. Then again i implemented ehance ecommerce then mobile bounce rate also started reducing. As per me tag assistant showing okay. Can you please check my attached site and let me know the issue? Thanks! John
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Google referral traffic drop around 14th July 2014 (UK). Anyone else seeing it?
We've seen around a 25% drop in Google referral traffic from the 14th July 2014 onwards and having real trouble identifying why and from what search terms we're being effected. WMT and Moz Pro don't show any movement. Is anyone else seeing the same thing on UK search terms? Seems a bit late to be the effect of Panda 4.0? Any help would be amazing. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | whis1 -
Improving Search Click through Rate
We are having a problem on our website with click through rates. We are getting between 100-150k impressions through search but we are only getting between 500-1000 clicks to the site. What strategies have you used in the past to help improve your click through rates? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pdangermond2 -
How long after a redirect should we see results?
In mid September we had to so some redirects from old URL's to new URL's. We haven't seen a significant jump in traffic so we are wondering how long this might take before we see a change. We are the brand so we should be getting some sort of authority from Google, yes? Any tips that can be offered would be grateful as we are stumped.
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Does providing access to my gmail account which is [email protected] give you access to or allow you to see my email messages or private emails?
RE: Regarding gmail access for Google Analytics Does providing access to my gmail account which is [email protected] give you access to or allow you to see my email messages or private emails?
Reporting & Analytics | | Amelia1230 -
Does an internal link inside an iframe result in a bounce?
We built a landing page with a wufoo form. Inside the wufoo form is a link going to another page on our website. We are wondering if clicking on that link will result in a bounce since it is in an iframe. We are using google analytics.
Reporting & Analytics | | seozachz0