Burst of non converting traffic in late January

[nippi]

On one of my sites that's pandalised still. Back in February when it was hit, it deserved it. Thin, duplicate content site. Now.... its probably still deserves i, though its improved.

of 700 articles, 90% were crud, 4000 business listing pages were thin, etc

have now only got 120 cruddy articles, massively less thin listings etc,

I put in a resubmission request.... didnt get an acknowledgement of it but i DID 2 days later get a flood of traffic. none of it converted, and 4-5 days later it was gone.

Has anyone else experienced such a flood?

Are you also managing a site that is perhaps on the cusp of recovery?

[tedster]

There have been several mentions of this kind of burst in non-converting traffic in both our January and February Update Threads [webmasterworld.com...] In fact, members have been noticing it off and on for several years, but so far there's no comprehensive understanding of what it represents. Guesses, yes - along the lines of some kind of statistical sampling or testing. But that's still pretty vague.

In addition, note this current thread: Random Bursts of Traffic to Random Pages [webmasterworld.com] - That may also be related to your question.

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Your observation about a burst following soon after a Reconsideration Request is a new element. However, I'm not sure about a real cause and effect relationship for two reasons:

1. Certainly many of the previous reports were not about a Reconsideration Request. In fact, many of them watched this pattern appear and disappear over extended periods of time.

2. Two days after submission would be pretty fast for a human instigated action (things have seemed more backed up than that for awhile) and slow for an automated trigger.