Huge spike in referral traffic from international domains
-
We have recently experienced a huge spike in referral traffic from .fr domains (we are in the UK).
They all lead to our 404 page. Its been going on for the last 3 days, and its still happening with about 20 visitors browsing the site from these domains at any one time, staying approx 3-7 seconds and then bouncing.
The top domain appears to be a parked page. We cant see any obvious links or ads coming from any of these .fr domains and they are quite irrelevant to our sites industry anyway, which leads me to believe these may not be real visitors.
Any advice on what may be causing this? And how to stop it?
Needless to say none of these referrals have converted.
-
Good point, Gianluca! I hadn't thought of that.
-
The same Tim wrote, but adding an extra step: check out if your site suffers some sort of vulnerabilities, like cloaking that could justify the unexpected interest from international users.
-
I suppose it's possible to block that traffic through your server, but unless it's costing you a lot of money on bandwidth, I don't think it's necessary to go that far.
Instead, I'd recommend just excluding that referring domain from your traffic reports. If you're using Google Analytics, you can do this by adding a filter to the profile - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034842?hl=en
Hope this helps!
Tim
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
-
Getting accurate Geo Location traffic stats in Google Analytics - HELP
One of our clients services the US and the UK, but having looked at the report over an extended period of time we can still see that the vast majority of traffic is coming from the US. I.e. our last report for March indicated that there were over 3,000 users in the US but only 6 in the UK. We know that Google Analytics works out a user’s location based on where their IP is located and not their physical location, and that this means that the data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it won’t always represent what you expect. That being said, we know that the traffic figures for Europe are largely inaccurate and would like to get some more accurate stats to report on. Is there a way to do so at all within Google Analytics?
International SEO | | Wagada1 -
International SEO Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Wordpress international SEO Plugin - recommendations needed
Hi Mozzers, I am designing the web architecture for a international website and will be using Wordpress. Can anyone recommend a plugin that lets me SEO for all countries? I have used Yoast many times but it does not seem to work for International Web SEO Architectures. Thanks Carla Here is an idea of what I was thinking of doing Homepage.com Irish-homepage.ie or Homepage.com/ie Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage UK homepage.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage
International SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
International SEO - Setting up reporting
What would you consider to be a best practice for setting up international keyword tracking? Both in MOZ and in Google Analytics? Would you set them up by language? IE Spanish, French, German... Or by country? Mexico, Spain, US Spanish, French Canadian, French... ect... *Our website is set up with our countries in subdomains. We currently are in about 10 different countries and plan on expanding globally. Any advice helps! Much thanks!
International SEO | | ScentsySEO0 -
Sub Domains in WM Tools
Hi Mozzers, Does anyone know if you can set a specified territory for a sub domain in WM Tools? I know you can do it at domain level but can you do it for a sub folder such as US.example.com or UK.example.com I can't see it anywhere in the interface? Thanks
International SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
Am I doing this right? Same website, content and similar domains.
I have 5 sites with the same exact content. I have a separate webmastertool for each one and I have targeted them to each country on WebMastertools? Iam I missing something or did I do it right.Thankswww.abc.com (USA)www.abc.com.ar (argentina)www.abc.com.mx (mexico)www.abc.com.co (colombia)
International SEO | | M_80 -
Anchor text for international SEO
HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!
International SEO | | Turkey0 -
International Link Building
Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs? Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they? We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.
International SEO | | RyanOD0