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Hi -
Does anyone have any suggestions about what to do when you start seeing large amounts of bot traffic on your site. I have a relatively new site that doesn't yet get much traffic. Yet I'm seeing 20 or 30 clicks per day on outgoing links on the site. It doesn't tally with visitor numbers in analytics. I'm assuming this is bots (google or others). Is there something that can be done about this? should I be concerned?
Thanks,
Mark
If you're using WP maybe try getting a "block bad robots" plugin and see if that helps.Quote:
Originally Posted by casionmark
Unless it's affecting performance of your site I wouldn't worry about it, I use wordfence (free) which is handy enough for monitoring login attempts which could be useful for peace of mind.
I wouldn't be bothered if it does not affect your website in any bad way. You are using WordPress?
I also had this problem, I was getting hundreds of fake clicks a day from dozens of different bots. If you are using WP then look for a plugin called Blackhole for Bad Bots, it is really easy to setup and it solved the problem for me within a few days.
They seem to come all at once for us, massive spike in direct traffic accompanied by a mass of clicks to all programs that are clearly meaningless. Just ignore them myself.
If you are already using a plugin like wordfence, wpcerber or such, consider blocking in that instead of adding yet ANOTHER plugin.
Rick
Universal4
Quote:
Originally Posted by casionmark
I am assuming you are seeing the bot traffic in Google Analytics. Here is the best guide to keep junk traffic out of GA. https://carloseo.com/removing-google-analytics-spam/
if you don't use Wordpress you can block spiders using robots.txt.
I will use your topic to ask a question to all webmasters, if you get a lot of contact form messages with spam, despite the Google Captcha ?
The issue with using the robots file is that you can’t filter all the spam traffic that is most likely visiting the site like you can by using hostname and language filters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Perffy
To answer you Captcha question, yes. But only if it’s a major problem.
I had this issue myself about 2 months ago. The bots were targeting NDB offers. On some networks I promote they had hundreds of signups and hardly any clicks, some did also have hundreds of clicks like yours too.
I took some costly hits on the networks I promote NDB's for, on the days the bot traffic struck I was down $800-900+. I spoke to some of the AM's and after investigating it for me they said the bots were playing the NDB's and if they won they would deposit a small amount to withdraw their winnings. I was getting hit every few days by 200-300 signups or clicks on each network that had a NDB offer. One of the brands asked me to remove them until I sorted it. Others worked with me in resolving the issue which helped.
I had to create new affiliate links, I also mixed the offers up in my top lists and ended up migrating my domain to another one which I was planning to do anyway. All in all it worked. I also use premium Wordfence which helps with this type of traffic. I block quite a few countries by default like China, Russia, India, Iran, Nigeria... At the moment it has worked but I keep an eye out all the time now just in case, it cost me several thousand in lost commission in the 2-3 months it was going on and I was trying to sort it.
wow what a crazy story. thanks for the details madz. I will keep my eyes open for this stuff thanks to your insight. (just dived into casino niche, but trying to avoid anything related to "free", cos f**k that traffic)
Glad to be of help and I hope you have a great and prosperous journey with the casino niche.
thanks <3Quote:
Originally Posted by Madz
gracias amigo/aQuote:
Originally Posted by Madz
Dont do a thing mate thats perfectly normal at the stage youre at
I've noticed a spike over the last month with bot traffic from a domain like bottraffic4u dot xyz. The weird thing is it shows in my analytics as actual visitors. Someone must be trying something somewhere lol