My traffic tripled overnight

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   Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years ago

   I'm assuming that this is due to some bot crawling my website. I have hits on seasonal stuff that hasn't seen a keystroke for several months. Some ideas of which bot it might be?

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      Bedbugabscondposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't know there were different kinds of bots. Glad to hear your seasonal stuff is starting to shine! Hope it keeps getting better for you!

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      IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      One of my subdomains also got a visitation for a few hours today - visiting all sorts of hubs that usually never see traffic, sometimes several times. I saw it happening on Analytics real time.
      
      The visits are all Direct. No further information available that I know of.

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         Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for the info.

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            IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            These are real hits and not a bot. Why would a bot spend an average of 8 minutes on a page? Apart from that, they counted as views, and bots don't tend to count, although when watching on Real Time you can see them there.
            
            I admit to not fully understanding what 'direct' hits actually are, but they are real views. It's just where they came from is a mystery.

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               Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               That's very interesting. I'm going to GA to see how much time was spent on some of them. Thanks for the update.

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               Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               I checked Google Analytics. The large number is listed as organic traffic, with duration on each page 0-10 seconds. So unless it was someone with fast hands and a weird sense of humor, I think it was a creepy crawler.

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                  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I looked again and dug a bit deeper.
                  
                  My views were from a bot - amazonaws.com, and they have visited this site quite a bit before, though I've never been able to find out much about them. It possibly was 8 seconds they spent on page - its says 00:08:03 which I assumed to be 8 minutes but perhaps isn't.
                  
                  Each of the pages they visited were sales hubs so they were maybe checking the sales capsules or something, I don't know.
                  
                  I looked at the technical details of the direct visitors and when I saw they all ran Linux I knew it was more likely to be a bot.

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      rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I wondered about that too a few days ago. Is it Christmas somewhere? One of my Christmas hubs was getting a number of views.

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         Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Oh, it's always Christmas in my heart, but I don't think that matters on the whole.   That's how I knew it must be some little crawly. I had Christmas articles and short stories (which nobody ever reads) light up.

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         WebsiteConfettiposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Some people do the whole Christmas in July thing. Maybe it has to do with that

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      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I don't get excited about spikes in traffic until I see whether it continues. 
      
      This has happened to me in the past, both on HP and on my blogs.  Usually, it turns out to be a spammer, or Stumbleupon, or something else that's not genuine readers.

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         Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, I hadn't thought of Stumbleupon.

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         Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, I hadn't thought of Stumbleupon.

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      MarleneBposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      This happened to me on Saturday with one of my other websites. I thought I must have hit on something and should try to re-create the scenario to make it happen again. The only thing is - I didn't do anything. I was just checking my stats and over the course of five hours I had over 200 visitors. I don't need to say how excited I was over that amount of traffic in one day - in just a few hours. It only happened for those limited few hours and only on that day. I wish it was a continuous thing, but it is comforting to see that I am not the only one it happened to. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

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      LauraGTposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I've had the same experience today, with a tripling of hits, with several hubs that have been at "0" for a week getting multiple hits.  I'm assuming it's 1-2 people checking me out, but I can still keep my fingers crossed that it's a new surge of interest in what I'm writing about. 

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   Are you using Analytics?

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      Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I am. IzzyM said it was direct traffic with no further info. I was wondering about Facebook. I do put links there.

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   cryptidposted 11 years ago

   I had a blast of traffic over a 4 hour period last Friday afternoon.  About 400 extra views from nowhere.  According to Analytics, it looked like something visited every page on my subdomain, including questions, most multiple times.  No weird clicks though, and no spam comments. I emailed HP about it, but haven't heard back yet.
   
   No idea what it was.  Hopefully someone has an idea.

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      Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If you hear back from them, I'd be interested to see what they found.

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   WhydThatHappenposted 11 years ago

   Mine too, I thought it was the day of the week? All of my hubs had a significant increase in traffic, so I have no idea what caused it

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   WhydThatHappenposted 11 years ago

   It could be HubPages' own server, since the site's look got a reboot, maybe every page got visited for an update.

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   Will Apseposted 11 years ago

   Could be a little Panda surge. If you are found to be wholesome, you get to keep the views (or some of them).

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   IzzyMposted 11 years ago

   Bot or no bot, they translated into $$$ for the Hubads program, so I'm happy. Wish they'd come back LOL!

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      Horatio Plotposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Perhaps they just want a nice rest from all that crawling. A couple of weeks rest in Alicante might do them some good. Perhaps they'll come back with a few friends!

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         IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I need to update my profile. I've moved back to the UK although I still have my Spanish address. Next time I go it really will be for a vacation, which will be nice (Nicer than living there, anyway!)
         
         Spain is in deep recession and has become a very expensive place to live.

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            Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            It's nice to know the $$$ might stay. That's definitely an up side. Sorry you're moving out of the sun. I'm in Oregon in the U.S. and it's been a long rainy spring. I'm longing for a little sun.

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   rebekahELLEposted 11 years ago

   I looked this up recently to understand more about direct hits. It's more than just a bookmark or someone typing in the URL. I found this interesting list.
   http://www.webtrendsoutsider.com/2008/r … s-reports/
   
   
   For the past two weeks, I have seen an increase in views. Most are coming from google searches.

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      brittanytoddposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Wow!  Thanks for this list...very interesting.

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      Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Great info! Thanks.

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      IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      This is a really interesting link, Rebekah, thanks. Not that I understand much of it, really.
      
      But I had those direct views on 3 of my subdomains, followed by a substantial increase in google views (not on this account unfortunately).
      
      I really do want them back now, still no idea what they were, but they did something good.
      
      The whole time (several hours) my accounts were getting blasted by them (they not only visited each hub, they visited all the links on each hub too), I saw the same 2 or 3 visitors coming from Richmond, the Rockville Centre and an unnamed location off the coast of W. Africa which is a maximum of 9, but I was seeing 15 - 20 views per 5 minutes more than normal for a while.
      
      They all counted as views when it came to HPads, so they must have been real, but who they were I'm still unclear on, but they were welcome

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         wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         That's interesting - I very often see what is likely the same site off the west coast of Africa in the analytics live view.  It comes and goes all the time, with as many as 4 or 5 views at once and often bounces around several hubs before leaving.  Never have figured out what is going on there, but I've been seeing it for weeks now.

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            Healthy Pursuitsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            That could be scary. Maybe the Nigerian scammers have a whole new wrinkle up their sleeves. Will stay tuned...

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               IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Nah..wouldn't think so. That location probably isn't even in Africa.
               
               I live in the wilds off the west coast of Scotland, and Analytics real time puts me in London, which is 500 miles away and in another country!
               
               I'm not sure how it picks its 'locations'. I thought it might be server related and that your location would be the nearest but mine seems to pass through every major city in Britain to settle on London, and I have no idea why.

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            IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            As far as I can see, it is a good thing, so they are welcome

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   David 470posted 11 years ago

   My traffic seems to be higher than the usual weekday traffic (I got hit by a Panda update, though, so I am still not as high as originally).

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