Hundred-fold spike in traffic today from no detectable source?

1. 89

   Howard S.posted 11 years ago

   Is anyone else seeing a strange spike today? I've been getting less than 10 page views per day lately, but it's over 500 today and still rising. The source is undetectable using Analytics, Webmaster Tools, or HubPages Sources. I'm still getting 0 from Google and less than 20 from HubPages.
   
   What's even stranger, too many hubs receive the same number of page views. For example, at one point I had 37 hubs with views and 21 of them had exactly 20 views each, but none with 2-8 or 11-17 views.
   
   I thought HubPages' counter might have a bug, but my wife's is counting normally.

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2. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago

   Your earning stats might be interesting tomorrow...

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3. 93

   Melovyposted 11 years ago

   Howard S, I’m having a very similar thing. My views started rising yesterday till they were about half as much again as I’ve been getting lately, but today over about 20 different hubs they just keep on going up and up, till now it’s nearly 4 times what I’d expect. I wondered if the counter was wrong too.
   However my hubs do not have the same number of views - those that normally get a reasonable number of views anyway have gone even higher and I am seeing some views through search engines although I’m not convinced it tallies with the stats. And I do have some hubs with no views.
   I’m very puzzled by it.

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4. 89

   Howard S.posted 11 years ago

   @Melovy: It sounds like the same thing. Mine's over 600 now (from 500 when I started the thread).
   
   Sorting on the 24 hr column, most hubs stay in the same order, mostly gaining one page view at a time. There's definitely something fishy. And still only 1 from google.com

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5. 93

   peeplesposted 11 years ago

   I'm having a weird spike today myself. Not ascgood as you though. Strangly a lot of people on google are coming to just one of my hubs. It is however showing up as google.

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6. 89

   JKennyposted 11 years ago

   Yep, I've had these before, it's nice to see, but rarely does it last more than a day, which can be very annoying.

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7. 93

   Melovyposted 11 years ago

   @ Howard, I’m getting on a hub that has around 34 views, 8 are accounted for through google and on another out of 79 views 39 are accounted for. (Normally I could expect about 39 on that hub and 8 or up to 20 on the other.) Similar story on the other hubs, including ones that don’t get. So not quite the same picture as you are getting, but I agree there’s something odd. I’ve also noticed the recorded views are not showing up on the graph on each hub’s stats. But since I’ve never had cause to study this closely before I don’t know how quickly these update.

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8. 57

   MelissaBarrettposted 11 years ago

   I got the same spikes.  I thought at first it was because the HOD yesterday but it's on unrelated hubs and the numbers are also quite similar.  No finding where the traffic is coming from either from hp or analytics.  I wrote a support email no answer yet.

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      Melovyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Melissa, thanks for that. I think I will file a report too because it’s 1am here and I need to let this go for now.

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9. 89

   Howard S.posted 11 years ago

   We shouldn't have to post this anywhere else. This is the new forum for traffic problems. While good traffic may not exactly be a problem, we're worried that it's symptomatic. Now @ktrapp has the same thing; Melissa, ktrapp and me makes three of this week's HoD recipients.
   
   Paul Edmondson is the one directly responsible to monitor this forum node.

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      Melovyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I had a HoTD last week - the 31st May, so you could be right that it's got something to do with that. Certainly seems likely, as my hub is still on the front page carousel for guest users. I did start to wonder when I saw Melissa as I knew hers was yesterday. I must have missed yours. (Belated congrats.)
      And now I really must go to bed and leave this!

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      1. 89

         Howard S.posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Sorry Melovy, I missed yours. Only nine show on the archive page at a time, and yours was 10 days ago. Well, we've got it half solved for them now. Finding enough consistent data to work with is usually the hard part. I'll be real interested to hear an explanation. And even more interested to know whether earnings reflect page views--nothing else correlates.

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10. 57

    MelissaBarrettposted 11 years ago

    Did you guys do a snippet search from text in your HOD?  I found a scraper with mine...It's an odd setup though it seems to somehow be a live page... but no way to contact the site own to be found...
    
    try it and see if you pull up a page at lucki13 dot com.

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    1. 93

       Melovyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Melissa (yes I'm still here) I didn't find any copy of mine, but searching lucki 13 dot com brought up a page of hubpages banners. I don't know if it's genuine or not. Actually, it's the same scaper site I think.
       Have any of you had a new follower on Twitter today who is a "champion of new non-fiction writers'?

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          Melovyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I just had a look at the site and it does seem to have copied everyone, not jsut the hotd people.

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    Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago

    I've had a slight surge in just one hub - interestingly, it's the same one that was targeted a few months ago by that foreign site that sent thousands of malicious hits.  But today's hits are much (much) lower.  I reported it & asked Admin if they want me to unpublish the hub for a short time. I'm not able to monitor it closely just now.

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12. 92

    ktrappposted 11 years ago

    Howard - Thanks for picking up on my feed comment and letting me know that you started this forum thread.
    
    I hate to say it, but this huge surge in traffic just seems too huge. On my comment on the feed I stated that my page views today were around 3x a good weekday and now it's up to about 4x a good weekday.
    
    Most of the hubs with double red arrows have 30 or more views, a few are little less though.
    
    Interestingly, the page views in the my accounts/statistics are not noticeable on each of the hub's graph. In my experience the graphs are timely, they even say how many minutes ago they were last updated.
    
    It will be interesting to find out what is going on.

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13. 92

    ktrappposted 11 years ago

    So it looks like at least 4 of us (Howard S., MelissaBarrett, Melvoy and ktrapp) whose Hub-of-the-Days are on today's HP home page slideshow are experiencing this unusual traffic surge for many of our hubs. I've had a few HOTDs before and this is not typical traffic behavior at all. As I said before, it will be interesting to see the cause of this because unfortunately something just doesn't seem right.

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14. 93

    Melovyposted 11 years ago

    I have just had a look at adsense reports and the increase in page views is showing up there now. It wasn’t last night.  The vast majority of my views are from the UK or USA, which is normal for me. And I haven’t had any clicks (which is also normal for me!) But the figures still do not correlate with what’s showing in traffic sources on HP.
    And my view figures in HP statistics have gone up another 200.

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    Marisa Wrightposted 11 years ago

    Has anyone considered that the spam attack and the rise in views are related?
    
    The spammers have to visit our Hubs in order to leave comments.  Of course, it's all done with some kind of automation so they can do hundreds in a day if they want. They're not coming from search engines, they're coming to HubPages direct, and of course they don't want us to know where they're coming from!

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       Melovyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       It did strike me that there could be a connection. Yet, I have not been targeted by spammers - I've had one or 2, and one email sent through HubPages that reads like spam. I can only speak for myself here, others may have been spammed as well as spiked!

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       ktrappposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       This has occurred to me, but all the spam comments preceded the huge increase in traffic. The two really didn't overlap, at least not visibly to me. But this huge increase in traffic does not seem real, and I would guess has something to do with some automated illegitimate/spam process, especially since those of us who had similar traffic surges way out of the norm also had a link to one of our hub's on the HP home page (via HOTD).

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    ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years ago

    Add me to the list!  I had a HOD last week and Saturday my total views tripled with no known source on HP or Google Analytics.  I notice there is a pending status on earnings since June 8th, so maybe they are trying to figure it out.  My most popular hubs all received big hits, so I felt like someone linked my profile page somewhere.

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       ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       I had a spike of over 600 extra views with only about 3 spammers.

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17. 90

    bankscottageposted 11 years ago

    For me, I had a huge spike in an hour today.  I am relatively new, 4 months, 27 published hubs, 30-40 views is a good day for me.  At 5PM I had 36 views.  At 6PM, I had 181 views, all hubs with at least some views, none with a ton.  At 7PM, still at 181.  I did not have a HOD and have no unrecognized comments.

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18. 85

    Marisa Wrightposted 11 years ago

    For those who say they had a huge spike in views with only a handful of spammers, did you check your spam filter?

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    1. 92

       ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Just checked mine and no additional spammers.

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       ktrappposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       I received plenty of spam comments probably last Wed. and Thursday (or was it Thurs. and Fri.) Either way, on Saturday when I experienced the large surge in traffic, I had only a few spam comments in the spam filter. I'm sure HP can establish the source of the traffic- but one way or another, I would guess the traffic is somehow spam-related.

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       1. 92

          ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Now that I think about it, my spam was Thursday and Friday EST, and then Saturday morning I saw the big spikes.  Hoping we get to keep the earnings on it.

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             ktrappposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             It will be interesting to see what happens, but on another note...congrats on your pirate food recipe win. Now that's $50 you can count on for sure.

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             1. 92

                ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Thanks, ktrapp.  Yes, it has been an exciting week!

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    BonnyCposted 11 years ago

    Hmm, I don't really fit the mold here. I haven't written a hub in over a month, I think. I've been focusing on creating my own niche website. I still check in from time to time just to see how things are going.
    
    Lately, I've been getting maybe 10-20 views a day overall. Yesterday it increased to about 50 and today it's over 200!! I don't really get it. I haven't had any hubs of the day or spam comments.
    
    Oh well, I guess I'll take it!

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20. 92

    ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years ago

    Did anyone figure out what happened? It appears I did not make any earnings for all the extra views I received Saturday.

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       ktrappposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Same here, as expected, since it had to be spam-related in one way or another.

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          ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Guess I was hoping that a link to the HOD slideshow just went viral and we would get credit for the views.  Oh, well........  Did you receive any official notice or explanation?

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    LeanManposted 11 years ago

    For several months many of us have been getting visits from a facebook "bot" normally in batches of 20 for a hub to up to a 100 visits in a short space of time to a single hub. These don't show up on analytics but were showing up on individual hubs pages..
    
    Maybe this is what you are seeing.. look for forum posts about facebook views..

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22. 92

    ChaplinSpeaksposted 11 years ago

    Here we go again.  My page views just doubled in an hour, 250 to 500.  Anyone else seeing a surge?

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23. 78

    kirstenblogposted 11 years ago

    My traffic has been on the up for close to a week now, with earnings coming along too so I am pleased. My traffic is almost back to pre-panda levels, almost, with earnings almost back too. I just wonder how long it will last for before another slap?

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24. 94

    Winterfateposted 11 years ago

    Had a traffic spike on one of my hubs yesterday, but it died off.
    
    Didn't get any extra $$$ from it either...

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25. 74

    Reality Bytesposted 11 years ago

    I got a spike on one of my hubs from Huffingtonpostdotcom today.  I wish I could find my link on the site.

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26. 95

    cryptidposted 11 years ago

    Did anyone figure out why this happened?
    
    I did not have this issue last week when everyone first reported it, but today my traffic has increased x5 since 10 AM.  There are no accountable sources in individual Hubs or my HP traffic page, I have no spam comments, and no freaky Adsense clicks. 
    
    Sure wish I could feel happy about all of those extra red arrows, but it does seem like something strange is happening.

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27. 61

    Scribenetposted 11 years ago

    I had a large spike awhile back, but it never registered on the Hubpages stats. I was on the site when it was happening and wondered why all of a sudden there were so many views happening so I followed it the next few days. It did register on Google Analytics but I could not figure where it came from. Alas it was just a spike!

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