Weird Traffic

[TravG]

So looking at my traffic repports in last few days my traffic went from about 200 vists per day to 2000 visits per day. It is not through search and obviuosly not organic. In 1 day I do not see how it jumps like that.

Anyone know what could explain that? Do you think it is someone trying to mess with my site?

[universal4]

Yep,

SEO bots.....link bots.....spam bots....many of which just absolutely refuse to follow robots.txt (some do but many don't).

Rick
Universal4

[TravG]

It cant really hurt my site though right? AS far as search goes.

[edgarf76]

that is nuts, i think it can hurt your site if g thinks that you are doing it to manipulate your stats. How is the traffic showing in your analytics? Serach, social, ppc campain?

[universal4]

Yea I didn't think to ask, any specific IP that is doing the majority of it?

Rick
Universal4

[lots0]

Sounds like scrapers to me.

I block them because they are copying (stealing) content.
There is NO legitimate reason (except for security checks) for a bot to act like you describe.

And Yes they can hurt your SEO... Duplicate pages are an ongoing problem with google.
Google still has problems with understanding where content originated and in giving credit for the content to the correct domain.

[AceOdds]

If your looking through your server logs these will show up every request to the server including scrapers and bots.

Tools like google analytics will only register visits from clients that have javascript enabled, which cuts out most of the bots as those just want the html/css content.

A lot of analytics packages let you filter out requests by ip, location or user agent for example. You may be able to set one of these up to fix your stats.

[edgarf76]

i am having a different problem, i use a wordpress platform for my sites and I keep getting new user registations and have to keep deleting them. I have googled and tried to find out what to do but I am getting vauge answers. I read about hackers accesses your site and putting their own code in and I am worried that they are doing this to me. Do any of you guys know how I can stop this from happening?

[DaftDog]

i am having a different problem, i use a wordpress platform for my sites and I keep getting new user registations and have to keep deleting them. I have googled and tried to find out what to do but I am getting vauge answers. I read about hackers accesses your site and putting their own code in and I am worried that they are doing this to me. Do any of you guys know how I can stop this from happening?

I am more a casino affiliate than any other so this may not apply to your type of visitors.

I find that "casino visitors" to my sites are not really interested in leaving comments so I only allow someone to leave a comment if they register an account and make sure that the comment is only published after being moderated. If I find that spammers are still registering and commenting then I disable comments all together.

To be honest I don't think I have ever had more than five real comments amongst thousands of spam comments, so to me comments are more of a hindrance than a benefit.

You could also activate the WordPress plugin Akismet and see if that helps block the comment spammers.

[lots0]

Running the wordpress platform, you are always gonna be one or two steps behind the hackers.

[DaftDog]

Running the wordpress platform, you are always gonna be one or two steps behind the hackers.

WordPress is no more or less immune to hackers than any other platform. Keeping your software up to date while using strong usernames and passwords will mostly keep them at bay. Also a plugin like Wordfence will help you to strengthen your installation and inform you when the enemy are at the walls.

[lots0]

WordPress is no more or less immune to hackers than any other platform. Keeping your software up to date while using strong usernames and passwords will mostly keep them at bay. Also a plugin like Wordfence will help you to strengthen your installation and inform you when the enemy are at the walls.

Oh I disagree with that.
Wordpress is targeted by hackers. The hackers work very hard night and day to crack the wordpress code.
Usually the cracks aren't even discovered for months.

Yes wordpress is good about updating their security... when they know about a crack.
But like I said they often don't find a crack for months and months after it has been successful.

Most large scale bot-networks are comprised primarily of sites running wordpress.

For a little more info on wordpress and just a few recent documented large scale wordpress cracks and attacks...

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/comp...ster340991220/

[edgarf76]

I am using login lockdown and do not even have the registration on my front my page. So they must have found the page where I log in, how is that? Beside the API plugin, changing my passcode and making it stronger often, my else can I do?

[DaftDog]

Oh I disagree with that.
Wordpress is targeted by hackers. The hackers work very hard night and day to crack the wordpress code.
Usually the cracks aren't even discovered for months.

Yes wordpress is good about updating their security... when they know about a crack.
But like I said they often don't find a crack for months and months after it has been successful.

Most large scale bot-networks are comprised primarily of sites running wordpress.

For a little more info on wordpress and just a few recent documented large scale wordpress cracks and attacks...

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/comp...ster340991220/

As stated in your linked site most attacks are brute force attacks. So if you have a weak username and password then you are asking to be hacked.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/04/fix...han-you-think/

[Christiaan]

I am using login lockdown and do not even have the registration on my front my page. So they must have found the page where I log in, how is that? Beside the API plugin, changing my passcode and making it stronger often, my else can I do?

This is the page where you can login /wp-login.php, that is the standard page for all wordpress websites.

[Pmig]

A good solution is rename that file to something else and create a blank wp-login.php

When you need to update your site just delete the blank one and re-rename the original file back.

This way your site will be more secure against that bruteforce attacks.

[alexcruncha]

This is the page where you can login /wp-login.php, that is the standard page for all wordpress websites.

There is a WP security plugin that changes the default login location. It is called Better WP Security.

So looking at my traffic repports in last few days my traffic went from about 200 vists per day to 2000 visits per day. It is not through search and obviuosly not organic. In 1 day I do not see how it jumps like that.

What are you using to track your stats? ...Google Analytics usually does an excellent job of only reporting real visitors and I have never seen it report bots, while something like awstats will show everything.

[lots0]

As stated in your linked site most attacks are brute force attacks. So if you have a weak username and password then you are asking to be hacked.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/04/fix...han-you-think/

Those brute force attacks are just the most recent and high profile.

wordpress is just full of little holes... like this
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files...spider-sql.txt

There are so many of these type of security 'holes' in wordpress that I could spend all day just gathering links to articles like that one.

I know a lot of folks like and use WP. But I sure would not use it, at least for a site I wanted to make money with.
But then again that is just me.

The wp plug in better security does use a different url to login... but it childs play to figure out what it is.

[alexcruncha]

Those brute force attacks are just the most recent and high profile.

wordpress is just full of little holes... like this
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files...spider-sql.txt

There are so many of these type of security 'holes' in wordpress that I could spend all day just gathering links to articles like that one.

I know a lot of folks like and use WP. But I sure would not use it, at least for a site I wanted to make money with.
But then again that is just me.

The wp plug in better security does use a different url to login... but it childs play to figure out what it is.

I agree Wordpress is not ideal for security... its just too common so its the perfect target. The thing is that a lot of people arent technical enough to get on with other platforms and WP is so so easy for the average joe. I dont use WP on my main money site but I would not discourage anyone from using it... however if it is an important site I would strongly recommend investing time+money in security, which starts with the web host. Provided regular backups and file versioning (at the server level), are implemented then there is no reason you cant easily recover from a hack (provided it is spotted). Also, web servers should have additional security that in a shared host environment should be implemented by any decent web host (some are much much better than others).

I can recommend WPEngine... these guys are more expensive than your average web host but let me explain what you get in return. They specialise in Managed Wordpress hosting to start with, they guarantee to fix your site if it is hacked (because as the webhost they are responsible to a degree) and they make any wordpress site very fast (using their own caching and optional CDN) plus they will implement WP security updates on your behalf. I'm not promoting them or anything I just know a little bit about their service and how important these things are to ppl who are serious about using Wordpress.

[tyler65]

Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum and confused where to start? It has lots of information and useful ideas like this. I agree with you that WordPress is no longer secure from hackers.