Zombie Traffic from Google - Analysis part 2

[frankleeceo]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

based on your observations, does the zombie traffic hit the same pages over and over? or do they rotate within the site?

Google can and will toss different kind of foreign traffic against the sites for testing purpose. And I think based on user engagement and their social signals (or other signals), sites will have a higher affiliation toward certain countries, regions, or even their language settings over time.

My informational niche site has had regional traffic shifts in the past months, where I would lose traffic in one country but gain in another. Regional traffic may be at play too. Although it could be the searching trend of the underlying countries. But in a nutshell, all the traffic I lost in asia I gained the exact amount back in americas traffic.

[edited by: tedster at 3:47 pm (utc) on Dec 17, 2012]

[bluntforce]

My Bing traffic earlier today was about 25% of the volume of my Google traffic. Not because of the whims of search engines, just a result of my work done in the recent past. I expect Yahoo! traffic will climb to similar levels shortly.

There is no doubt that mobile traffic will become more significant than desktop unless you are in an industry where large screen size/information display is a significant factor.

Kind of amusing how many people are making mention of picking up their marbles and going home. That's always been one of those things that if you are going to do it, power to you, but why would you announce it beforehand?

[backdraft7]

Just to weigh in on our usual post holiday bump...it basically did not happen.
What started did begin a day later than usual on Dec 27th, lasted all of two weeks and on Jan 21, turned south and back to nearly mid summer levels (lowest of the year). It seems when you start making a hot recovery, Google is there to hit the brakes and make sure you don't succeed. Every single time it looks like we are pulling out and moving back up the ladder, they quickly throttle us back. We even did a FB promo to invite 30,000 of our customers to join and like our FB page, over 1,000 new likes in 2 days, but it didn't register the slightest bump on G's radar. I'm not surprised.

[backdraft7]

Just a quick note: for those who have tried to sticky mail me regarding this topic: my sticky mail does not work. I can read your mail, but I can no longer send replies. Not sure why...

[backdraft7]

They're Back!

[SevenCubed]

^ Sticky mails or zombies? :)
Or zombies in sticky mails?

[backdraft7]

Zombies Seven, Zombies! That or I just got the worst manual penalty since MayDay 2010! Site is still getting "normal" levels of traffic, but it ain't human. Bounce went through the roof on Sunday.

[levo]

Are you by any chance using page visibility API to check if the requests are prerenders?

[backdraft7]

so after days of no sales and anemic traffic, I get an quick ON period with conversions almost every minute starting at 3:26pm CST...then one at 3:29, 3:30 and 3:31....now all is silent again.
Everything must have lined up just right for a few moments, like cherry, cherry, cherry on a casino slot machine.

levo - no, I'll have to look into that...got any more info?

[gyppo]

Often makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons that sites hit by Panda struggle more to get out of it. Less traffic, less targeted, therefore harder to get/calculate decent user metrics than a site that's getting its proper flow of traffic.

[levo]

For some time, Chrome has been prerendering the first result in SERPs - most of the time. It downloads all the resources & executes javascript. Prerendering is indistinguishable except page visibility API.

[developers.google.com...]

You can use the API to check for prerendering, also if the window is 'focused.'

[developer.mozilla.org...]

[backdraft7]

Zombies are BACK! All tire kickers - no buyers...huge mobile influx again (40%)

[diberry]

Backdraft7, I have a site that does NOT see zombie periods (and therefore can be a sort of control), but I've begun to note just how differently mobile users use the site. And the vast majority of my visitors lately are using phones, which is just scary - I have a smart phone, and I know for my taste there is NO way you can make a site into a great user experience on that. Which may explain the following.

- Very few of them come via search. Most just show up directly, with no referral that my stats program can identify.

- Once on the site, most of them only view a page.

- The vast majority of people finding me through Google do it on a desktop or tablet.

My guess is the phone users originally find me on tablet or desktop, bookmark my site in some way they can access on their phones, and then access it on the phones when they're out and about and just wanting a quick refresher of what my site said, or showing it to a friend or something like that.

So even though the phone users are my biggest group, they're also my most useless group. They may be the very same users who are converting on desktop and tablet, but on the phone, they don't do much.

I realize some of this might not apply to every site, for sure. I also don't mean this explains zombie traffic - just providing some stuff to consider. Think about whether there's ever any reason for people to look your site up on a phone. For example, if you sell plumbing parts, they may be doing cost comparisons while standing in the plumbing section of Home Depot.

[backdraft7]

So far, same pattern as last Sunday...no sales all morning, and so far most of the afternoon. 28 hours since last sale. Let's see what ridiculous patterns we are dealt THIS week...if any. Highest traffic day of the week now has the lowest conversion rate...and it's repeatable.

[Awarn]

Have any of you seen on an iphone where if you use the google search it just starts dialing on the phone. Saw that happen 3 times today while we were driving in the car. That might be part of the zomphie traffic. I have no clue why trying to search makes the phone start to dial.

[diberry]

Awarn, that's bizarre. I set my iphone to Bing and have not seen this behavior with them. Sounds like a glitch.

It should only offer to dial if you actually tap a phone number on a web page (which could be the search engine or the actual site's page).

[Awarn]

I don't use an Iphone but my wife uses an Iphone 5. She wanted to search something and clicked the Google icon and then I could hear the phone dialing through the Bluetooth in the car. Happened three times. I finally asked what are you doing. She says oh at times Google does this. She says it depends on what screen you get from Google.

[EditorialGuy]

Awarn: Sounds weird. Do you have any idea whose number is being called?

[netmeg]

I have never had that happen with my iPhone (unless I tapped on an ad)