Questionable RU traffic - any thoughts?

[chaumi]

About 3-4 weeks ago, significant-enough RU traffic started up to a few pages. EN pages.

Checking Yandex, the related search terms did show the pages high ranked. Yandex webmaster confirmed it, showing impressions and clicks for several related search terms. I'm monitoring on real time software, so the two do seem to match up.

Few days ago, it seemed to ease off. Last couple of days, it's increased further.

Plenty (the majority) seem to bounce. But some 'stay' for anywhere up to 20 mins. Several go to one page, then can go to a different page weeks later.

All of which suggests they might be 'real'...but equally introduces some reasonably heavy doubt.

If it is real, the bounces can likely be explained by 1. searchers are searching in RU, pages are there to be clicked in results, but they're landing on an unexpected EN page. But it's a Pachinko term, it could be that Pachinko is popular in the region which might explain the volume 2. one of the pages is a slots-related term, but the term itself appears to be some sort of gaming software (probably well-known in RU), so Yandex has itself in a twist and is just showing a 'wrong' page.

A few others get lesser volume traffic.

Any thoughts? Or any similar experiences where you worked out what's happening?

[OnlineProxy]

Looks like you’re getting some real traffic,just not really in the right spot,probably cause yandex is ranking your eng pages for rus gaming stuff.If words like "Pachinko" or certain slot games are popular in Russia,that could be why people are hitting your page,the bounce rate makes sense if they don’t get what they expected or it’s not in their language.But since there’s some interaction,it’s not all bots,you should maybe double-check your hreflang tags,metadata,yandex.Webmaster settings to make sure you’re not accidentally sending the wrong signals,if this traffic keeps coming and feels legit,try making a landing page in Russian or something to reel them in

[Pokerface]

Interesting subject and thread and something I will be following closely.