Bizarre logs - have I been google-stemmed?

[kaled]

Typically I get a couple of dozen hits a day for one page. The exact search will vary between several keyword combinations. Today, almost all these hits apparently arrived from people searching for blue.widg That's right, everyone is placing a . between two keywords, one of which is a lesser-used abbreviation. Now, either I've slipped into the twilight zone or Google has translated all click-thrus from their SERPS into a consistent pattern thus preventing me from knowing what keywords people are actually using to locate my site.

Of course, this would fit Google's current black-hat strategies.

On a scale from 1..10 of dirty rotten black-hat tricks, I would say this was about a 20.

Kaled.

[ciml]

Kaled, there's a danger that we all become a little delusional, seeing things that aren't there during these times of change.

The 'REFERER' header is sent from the browser, so in this case I suspect it's someone who's hit your page several times from an obscure search. It could be that they are having trouble loading the page and are hitting 'reload'.

[GoogleGuy]

My vote: twilight zone. ;) We're not doing anything like that.

[NickCoons]

kaled,

<or Google has translated all click-thrus from their SERPS into a consistent pattern thus preventing me from knowing what keywords people are actually using to locate my site.>

As ciml mentioned, your logs indicate the search terms based on the REFERER that the user's browser has sent. To clarify, this means that Google has no control over this. They would not be able alter this.

[kaled]

I stickied upwards of a dozen examples to WebGuerilla from my logs - I imagine that if I could not not back up the claim this thread would not have been created.

The searches were on wildly different IPs and the total number of hits was in line with expection. As for those that say it would be impossible to do this - well, I'm no expert in this area but I reckon it could be done with some form of redirect through a dynamic page.

Interestingly, when I searched through the logs for examples to send to WebGuerilla, I found a couple from MSN, however, theirs were slightly different. Whereas Google's were lower case, MSN's mixed case of the form Blue.WIDG

I am open to sensible suggestions/explanations, but I don't think it likely that
a) my logs (and only my logs) are being tampered with.
b) people have suddenly decided to type in blue.widg when looking for blue widgets.

Bear in mind this. If you cannot identify the keywords people are using to find your site, you cannot optimise for these keywords. So, such a policy of concealment would be entirely in line with current Google thinking.

Perhaps I've spotted an experiment with a technology that is unfinished, but someone has effectively falsified my logs and did so with a well-crafted and deliberate piece of technology. The questions that need to be answered are who did it and why.

I've just checked today's logs and the experiment or whatever is still running. Interestingly though, I spotted one entry of the form Blue.WIDG attributed to Google.

Perhaps my name was Alice is another life and the looking-glass has found me again.

Kaled.

[Excel]

Today, almost all these hits apparently arrived from people searching for blue.widg That's right, everyone is placing a . between two keywords

"everyone", you mean 2 dozen of probably the same person :o)

I hope you realise that you have just send about 80% of WW members on another witch hunt? They will be checking data centers every 5 mins now instead of 10 :o)

[Receptional]

Another theory to add to your pot...

Maybe somewhere in the world, there is a new "thing" called blue.widget and people really are looking for the new thing, but end up finding your blue widgets instead.

It's a bigger world out there than you may think - who would have thought "bluetooth" would relate to wireless connections? or Red Hat to an operating system?

Going away from our field of knowledge, I wonder waht the new brand of weedkiller is called that is being advertised on television all over Virginia? (OK - that was just an EXAMPLE.. I don't care to hear the answer)

But I mostly agree with Ciml's analysis.

[superscript]

This dot between search terms rings a faint bell somewhere in my addled grey matter - do I recall it has been suggested as one of the latest pieces of consumer advice to get better commercial results / get around the filter like the -nonsense?

[Excel]

heeerrrre we go!

[bird]

Did you (or your hoster) recently upgrade or otherwise modify your log analysis software?
Do you have access to your raw log files?

It seems to me that this would be the most likely point where such an anomaly could be introduced into your data. Google has no influence on the referrer string. That information is sent to your site directly by the visitors browser.

[kaled]

I'm looking at raw log files.

Perhaps there is a new piece of software out there called a blue.widget but how come everyone has heard of it except me and how come almost no-one is searching for ordinary blue widgets.

There is something weird going on.

I repeat, the total number of hits is in line with expection and these hits are coming from wholly different IP addresses. I should also mention they are spread throughout the day. This is not one person.

Kaled.

[Receptional]

heeerrrre we go!

LOL.

[kaled]

If you think I'm an idiot and this is a nonsense thread don't say anything - you're just bumping this thread up to the top.

Kaled.

[Netizen]

Even raw log files can be wrong if the hosting company messed around with the configuration of the web server. Perhaps you should check if they have changed anything?

The other question to ask is - does this occur for all referals?

[kaled]

The other question to ask is - does this occur for all referals?

No. There are four areas/products in my site of which one is for a product still in beta. Only one product is affected.

If I were to email my host to ask if they are falsifying my logs I imagine I would get a pretty short response.

Kaled.

[Chndru]

there is a new piece of software out there called a blue.widget

You need to take off your google-is-coming-to-get-you glasses once in a while :)

[johannamck]

I hate to add more speculation to this topic. I wonder if this is similar to something that occured to me.

A page of mine had (inadvertedly) the phrase "something.ab" and it started getting a lot of hits from people who were looking for a site www.something.co.ab , with "something" being a popular keyword/domain and "ab" being an obscure country abbreviation.

[jimbeetle]

I think we all run into this occasionally, that weird search term that doesn't make much sense.

For example, how and why would 23 people search Google and MSN using the same strange syntax yesterday -- and wind up at my site:

widget. sprocket and cog.

It looks to me as if somebody copied a piece of text and pasted it into Google and MSN. The search term is very arcane and just happens to be on one of my pages in the same word order. There's about 6 IPs involved, but I'd bet it's still the same searcher.

Similarly, I don't think 39 people performed this same strange search...

"widget convoluted place backward extraneous term this"

...that I can barely understand, instead of:

"widget in this place" or "this place widget"

Or 22 people who just happened to use the same mangled special characters in an otherwise straightforward search.

I chalk it all up to just normal search behaviour. Normal being that many people just don't know how to search and repeatedly click on the same results without realizing what the heck they're doing.

[mcavic]

Kaled, visit the referral url yourself. If "blue.widg" shows up in the search box, then that's what people are searching for.

The . would be ignored by Google, I believe, so "widg" must either match something on your page, or your anchor text.

[kaled]

Well, if there's something new called a blue.widg out there, then there are a lot of unhappy searchers 'cos I can't find it on any search engine.

For the record, I am #1 on MSN and #3 on Google for blue widg or blue.widg so people would find my site if they wished to find a blue.widg. My question is why are so many people looking for blue.widg and so few (10% of normal traffic) looking for blue widgets.

Interestingly, searchers are not happy with finding my site. The usual download rate is 51%, the last day or so this has fallen to ~15%.

I doubt that it is significant, but ~half of these mystery referrals hex-encoded the . yesterday but none today.

Also, people are still searching for blue widgets on shareware sites - I know because I'm still getting normal traffic from them. Currently, this traffic exceeds useful google traffic by ~ 3:1. In fact, I'm getting more useful traffic from other sites than ever before.

I remain baffled.

Kaled.

[NickCoons]

Every once in awhile I've seen Google's results link to a redirect script that takes the user to a particular site, but this tends to quickly vanish. For this to be the cause of the effect that you are seeing, the script would have to actually redirect to the referer URL, and then that page would have to redirect to your site. Which means the user's back button would lose its functionality (as most people use it), and it would mean that if you went to the referer URL, you would be automatically redirected to your site as well.

I wouldn't say this is very likely.

Also, if I understand one of your posts correctly, you are in the top ten for the search "blue.widg". It would be a different case if your site was unfound for that search, yet you seemed to get a lot of traffic from it.

[kaled]

Also, if I understand one of your posts correctly, you are in the top ten for the search "blue.widg". It would be a different case if your site was unfound for that search, yet you seemed to get a lot of traffic from it

Actually, despite being #3 for blue widg I would only get two or three hits a day for this. This is partly why I'm so baffled about seeing so many hits from blue.widg

Anyway, It would appear that no-one else is experiencing the same problem so, for now, with Christmas coming, I suggest we take GoogleGuy's word.

Unless someone else experiences the same problem, let's consider this thread closed. If I find an explanation, I'll post it.

Kaled.

[Rearden]

Are you using awstats by any chance?

Overall it's a great stats package, but I think the keyword report is buggy. Sometimes it'll show a large number of hits on a really weird keyword combo overnight for no apparent reason.