Ladbrokes and 888 are manipulating my traffic stats

[didobg]

It's really funny that I don't advertise Ladbrokes and 888 brands since March or April and I don't have any of their affiliate links on my websites, but there are players clicking every month. That's how they work, I removed them from my websites as I was sure there is something suspicious and now the stats are showing that I was right. There is an abnormal behavior last months after they are not existing on my websites, each month from May till October (for 888 till September) there are existing clicks on all of their products. 888 obviously found out that I removed them and they stopped with that last month, but Ladbrokes are really optimists and continue with the fake data. It's really unprofessional and disappointing from such big brands to behave in such way, but that's their choice. I wanted to share my experience with all of you, knowing that nothing will change but at least I will serve my duty.

That's a screenshot from Ladbrokes stats for the last 3 months.



That's a screenshot from 888 stats for the last 5 months.

[universal4]

Some of the same instances in your other thread about manipulated stats also apply here (not a guarantee, but can account for a portion)

It is possible some programs can inflate stats in hopes of getting affiliates to send more traffic, but overall unless you have covered all the other bases it is extremely difficult to determine that clicks are not from bots, and if you have pages in cache that have links in them that were previously removed you may continue to see clicks from those cached pages for weeks/months/years (unless you don't want pages cached)

Rick
Universal4

[casaffiliate]

Check your server logs. As universal4 has pointed out it's most likely clicks from bots.

Here is what clicks from bots usually look like:
207.46.13.71 - - [20/Oct/2016:18:03:33 +0200] "GET /go/some-casino HTTP/1.0" 302 484 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)"

This is a click from a real user:
82.132.238.204 - - [20/Oct/2016:17:16:13 +0200] "GET /go/some-casino HTTP/1.0" 302 428 "http://www.yourwebsite.com" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SM-G900F Build/MMB29M) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2785.124 Mobile Safari/537.36"

[universal4]

There are also a WHOLE LOT of the seo wannabe type spiders and bots that impersonate themselves as normal browser traffic that can also inflate your click stats. (so it's much more than just Bing and other engines)

Rick
Universal4

[Pokerface]

Thanks for sharing, good to know, very troublesome. Perhaps your site was copied elsewhere or it's robot traffic? Regardless, if you, or anyone, is getting credit for clicks that should not be then how many clicks are not being counted? Sounds like very loose and unaudited software that eventually benefits no one. Something I will monitor.

[MMM]

I agree with the rest. Also see no point for them inflating your click stats.