An overnight substantial drop in visit duration while amount of sessions grew.

[Amis]

Hi,

My Ave. session duration has dropped from 2:10 to 0:14 overnight. At the same time, amount of sessions from all channels grew on average of 56%. This increased (and I guess low quality) traffic is coming in from multiple regions, languages, devices and channels. I was not able to pin point it to 1 source, location, landing page etc. See enclosed screen shot.

I would appreciate if anyone can shed some light on what's wrong and if there are any SEO implications.

Thanks.

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[DonnaDuncan]

Ami,

From everything you're telling and showing me, the only thing that seems to make sense is an increase in nuisance bots or a problem with your tracking codes. Would you like to give me access to your Google Analytics so I can take a look? (My email is on my profile.) Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can see things differently. You're probably cross-eyed from having looked at this for so long.

You can revoke access again after I've had a look.

[Amis]

Hi,

Thanks for introducing Screaming Frog. very usefull!

It seems the GA is properly installed. I've checked most of our pages through this Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna

I spent a long time searching a possible change taking place right around the time this drop append and also tried to pinpoint the drop to a specific audience, region, system type etc. But no luck. It seems the increase in amount of sessions and the drop in session duration is consistent throughout all regions, devices, acquisition channels etc.

Check out the enclosed screen shot. it literally append over night.

Looking on exit pages, I don't see a pattern. There's an increase on the amount of exists (sines we have more overall sessions) but the exists are distribute across all pages.

I would appreciate your help...!

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[DonnaDuncan]

Hi Ami,

The articles I referenced should explain which ones to filter. It's really a process of elimination. You filter IN the ones you know will send legitimate traffic to your site - your own domain, Google translate and the WayBack Machine.

What changes have you made to the site recently? Something triggered these changes I would think.

I'd check to see if you have Google Analytics properly installed on every page of the site. Is it installed more than once? This post by Seer Interactive will help you determine whether that might be the problem.

Then I'd look to see where people are exiting the site. Is there a pattern?

If none of that sheds any light, I'd be happy to take a look.

[Amis]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer.

while I do have a few weird domains (including 4webmasters.org) in the list you pointed me to, I also have my main website, my subdomians, youtube and many others.

How do I know which ones to filter?

Also, the Ave. session duration from these "visitors" is over a minute. I don't think they explain the drop from 2:10 to 0:14.

The amount of visitors from these is not substantial and does not explain the jump in visitors (that started with the drop in session duration).

Thoughts?

Thanks.

[DonnaDuncan]

The first thing that comes to mind is "nuisance bots". Have you checked for that?

If not, go to Google Analytics, Audience > Technology > Network and then Hostname (as shown in the attached image). Any hostnames that don't contain your own domain name, Google Translate or an archived version of a page on your site are likely nuisance bots and should be blocked from reporting.

Here's a Moz post that explains more about nuisance bots and how to block them as well as a webmasters stack exchange Q&Athat explains how to block them.

Nuisance bots impact your SEO reporting. They do not impact your visitor experience, rankings or conversions.

If that doesn't answer your question, let us know and we (meaning the larger Moz group) can try again.

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