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.
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
-
Big drop in organic traffic after moving the website-should we still do 301 redirects?
Hi,
Reporting & Analytics | | martin1970
We have a website that got redesigned with new urls in Jan 31, 2018. Since then our SEO traffic has gone down big time and to never recover. We did not do any 301 redirects back then (very stupid I know but I was not in charge then). So my question is would it be beneficial to 301 redirect old urls that were once ranked but now have all 404 errors or is it too late to do these 301 to gain any benefits? If a page that was once ranked and then have a 404 error, how long does google keep that 404 page in their database? I have heard information saying that although the page is a 404 it may still be indexed in their backend for some time and then it completely drops off all together. If so do you know how long time they would keep those 404 in their database? The old urls may have had good backlinks pointed to them because the organic traffic was good back then. So I wonder if doing 301 right now would help send some link juice over to the new urls? Or would this be a complete waste of time? Cheers Martin1 -
Internal Referral Traffic Issue due to https/http?
Hi Mozzers, we´re running a secured https account section on our website including a messaging center where lots of non secured own URLs are being shared among the users. Is there a possibility that a user clicking on one of the shared URLs within the https section triggering another session thats been counted as direct traffic? Thanks for your help! Greets
Reporting & Analytics | | LocalIM
Manson0 -
How accurate is Google analytics at measuring traffic? (Free version)
Hi Guys. When we compare our actual sales to Google analytics conversions it can be way out. Sometimes as much as 50%. Is this the same for the data on traffic? And if so, does the data tend to be out by a similar amount over time? i.e) If we compare this year and last year it give us a good indicator of differences in traffic volume? (albeit not 100% accurate?) Thanks. Isaac.
Reporting & Analytics | | isaac6630 -
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 -
Does PPC affect SEO Traffic?
Last week my website (www.cooke.co.uk) started PPC advertising with Google. This has been successful in increasing the amount of overall traffic to the site. However, since we started the PPC advertising, our traffic from organic search has decreased significantly. Our rankings haven't changed dramatically enough to warrant such a decrease. Has anyone else been in a situation where organic traffic has dropped as a result of launching a paid campaign? What did you do to rectify it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Google Analytics shows wrong traffic source
I was reviewing out traffic sources on GA for this past week's traffic history, and noticed a couple of visits & conversions that GA cited as coming from campaigns from emails that were sent out in 2012 and early 2013. it seems odd that we would have traffic & conversions from these older campaigns - on a regular basis. it's not even from one campaign, but from multiple campaigns. is it possible that it is a cookie issue? - i wonder if these visits were really from the email campaigns - or if they were from organic searches or other sources. Thoughts? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | S.S.N0 -
Tips for migrating Google News traffic?
We are about to relaunch a site that gets a lot of Google News traffic. We are not changing domain, but the site structure is changing greatly, with the URLs of both news index pages and articles being shaken up. Obviously, we've 301-ed every page to its closest equivalent on the new site. We've also got a news sitemap. As we are not changing domain, is there anything further we need to do to help protect our Google News traffic. On a related note, does anyone have a relaible way of measuring traffic from Google News listings in universal search?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
Not displaying traffic data
Hello! For my site http://systemfarmer.hu i have connected GA accout.
Reporting & Analytics | | systemfarmer
But if I try to access traffic data, it just keeps loading. Any idea? Regards, Laszlo0