Google ZOMBIE Traffic Observations

[samwest]

Mods Note: Split out of the October 2015 Monthly Observation thread into a separate Zombie Traffic Thread
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Sunday morning, usually banging away, but nothing but slow moving Zombie traffic, one or two at a time and sitting on the same pages for several minutes. Switch is currently OFF.
Still in decline. No sign of any seasonal upswing, which is way overdue.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 7:08 pm (utc) on Oct 19, 2015]

[heisje]

If we extrapolate this phenomenon to a global perspective, because of the global dispersion this seems to have according to the diverse locations of people observing and posting here : we are considering a *massive* bulk of zombie clicks, to the billions actually. We are talking of global, massive firepower.

I know of only a very limited number of sources that command such massive firepower.

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[reseller]

Hej folks

Who could be the main beneficiary of Google Zombie Traffic?

[WhiteHatTryHard]

Stats still gone to s**t with no explanation what so ever.
Time on page down 30% again, pages per session down 35% again no obvious reasons what so ever.

The main beneficiary would seem to be either your competition that profits from your usage data getting you penalized... but other than that i see no winners in this one. But it has to be assumed that Google profits, why else would they allow it to happen?

[samwest]

Who could be the main beneficiary of Google Zombie Traffic?

Who makes 21% more profit each quarter? That's the obvious beni.

Would be nice to circulate a survey to see what each site is using as site type, framework, plugins, hosting, etc to attempt to find a common denominator OTHER than Google.
There's GOT to be a reason for this...Google's the easy, obvious answer, but is it really?

I'm working on a form version.

[heisje]

Zombie traffic on a mass scale, irrespective of source, is one of the gravest incidents on the web in recent memory - still. shocking that only a few have shown any concern about it. Go figure . . . .

.

[Simon_H]

@samwest Great idea. A few things to include if you haven't thought of them already:
* Third party hosted web fonts, e.g. Google web fonts
* Third party hosted embedded reviews, e.g. Feefo
* Google pagespeed or similar proxy service

[glakes]

The main beneficiary would seem to be either your competition that profits from your usage data getting you penalized...

Zombies are not initiated by competition as part of a negative seo attack, at least in my case. If Google sends 1000 visitors per day to my site, which has normal conversion rates, on Tuesday, where did this baseline of normal Google traffic go on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? If I was getting hit by bots I would see some spike in visits and I don't. On zombie days total Google traffic may be around the same on a good day or show a slight increase up to 10%, with normal log activity for other traffic sources.

The above paragraph describes the flaw in the bot theory. There never is a spike in total traffic from Google or elsewhere to indicate bot activity above what I've seen for years. Google is in full control and is either sending people or zombies to my website.

but other than that i see no winners in this one.

samwest described who the obvious benefactor is. If zombies are clicking ads, then someone else must be getting the good traffic and their ads are getting clicked too. More total clicks = more revenue for Google. The obvious losers are those with Adwords accounts getting drained from zombie clicks. As far as I am concerned at this point, the entire Adwords platform is ripe with fraud and has been devalued as an advertising platform. Who is committing these acts is very clear to me - it's Google.

[hasek747]

There is one obvious flaw in the theory that it is Google sending the bots: why would they do it? If they want to send the buying traffic elsewhere, why not just tank a website completely in the rankings due to some fairly unspecific reason and let that be the end of it? No one is going to bat an eye if another 500, 1000, 10 000 websites are tanked in the rankings completely due to another "algorithm update". But to start sending "fake" traffic sounds like a very big and complicated scheme - one that would draw significant attention towards Google.

It just doesn't make sense to me that they (Google) would intentionally do that for the reasons suggested, when they have a much simpler and less suspicious way of achieving the same goal, if they want to.

[Simon_H]

@glakes I think you should read some other comments in more detail before making those kind of statements. Firstly, there is no benefit whatsoever to Google generating bots themselves. If Google wants site owners to start using paid, then the last thing they want to do is pad organic traffic with bots. Because sites with high organic traffic and low conversions will optimise their site, not invest in adwords. Google would want to do exactly the opposite, i.e. low organic traffic, high conversions. Then site owners will want to invest in generating more traffic, i.e. adwords. And it would be even dumber for them to do this with existing paid customers. Because, anyone experienced in managing paid campaigns will know that the standard response to a poor value-per-click is to lower the bid and ultimately shut down the campaign. So Google would never introduce bots because they'll end up losing a huge amount of money.

I think you need to read up on traffic shaping. It's been suggested for a long time that Google does this (including on this forum) and it makes perfect sense. Read this: [webmasterworld.com ]

If these are bots, then they are NOT Google. But they are eating into your traffic quota, which is why you're seeing similar or slightly increased traffic *volume*, but reduced conversions. Google's failing is that they're unable to detect the bots and so are counting them towards your daily traffic quota.

[glakes]

@Simon and @hasek747

If they want to send the buying traffic elsewhere, why not just tank a website completely in the rankings due to some fairly unspecific reason and let that be the end of it?

Google would want to do exactly the opposite, i.e. low organic traffic, high conversions.

Both comments are along the same lines, and I'll respond as such. The reason why Google won't tank a site because what Google is doing now is on a global scale and tanking so many websites would sound an alarm. And what's the first thing regulators look for? Google giving preference to their own interests over others or targeting websites for demotions where Google has a self interest. What I believe Google is doing now is leaving the ranks the same but killing off the traffic quality. This achieves the same result, at least in the short term, as tanking a website's organic ranks. And nobody can run to their respective regulatory agency crying that Google ranks their own websites over ours because our ranks remain about the same.

In my last post I said Google was sending zombies, not bots. Please re-read my post. If it was not clear in that post, I said the zombie traffic has absolutely nothing to do with bots because there is no abnormal spike in traffic to suggest anything out of the ordinary. It's all about Google traffic quality, which they have full control of. Or is someone suggesting they don't, have been hacked or otherwise are unable to control what they display?

What I believe Google is doing is displaying the same set of search results (organic and paid), for my ecommerce website, to people they definitively know have no intent on buying. Such untargeted traffic is showing up to me as zombies - worthless visitors that don't buy or even browse my website for that matter. This is traffic shaping and exposed my Adwords account to many unwanted clicks, costing me and others a lot of money. Follow the money and you will find who is benefiting from this chaos.

Once again, I see no abnormal activity to suggest someone is using bots to target my website for Google to initiate some traffic quota. Nothing. This is all Google's doing, and they should own it.

[jrs79]

Here is my theory.

There are only so many searchers on the internet. I know mobile searches are increasing at a high rate, but most of this is more screen time not more shoppers. So while the numbers of potential customers is growing it is not growing at the rate of demand for these clicks.

As More and more sites start to run Adwords campaigns this limited supply of transactional searchers has to be spread around in order for sites to continue to invest which Google needs to meet quotas. So the trade-off is that some sites that were doing great with AdWords (conversions and what not) see a decline, but more companies are signing up for AdWords. If some sites stop using AdWords this is just collateral damage and we know from organics that Google is ok with that as long as they gain more than they lose. Most large companies will never abandon AdWords.

At the same time this is affecting organic traffic. More clicks are going to ads as Google continues to tweak their layout to ensure this happens. But Google also needs companies to believe in their organic traffic in order for them to believe in them as a strong marketing channel so they do the same technique described above to keep sites getting organic visits.

In the end the Zombies are really the result of traffic shaping and throttling.

[glakes]

Your theory jrs79 and mine are very similar. Ultimately there is a reason that a couple days a week I and other see good traffic from Google. And no, I don't see good traffic from Google a couple days a week because some external force decided to stop hitting my site with bot traffic. LOL Yes, it is feasible that Google is trying to please everyone by spreading good traffic to everyone and will upset quite a few in the process.

Though our theories are the same, I still view Adwords to be a competitive bidding marketplace. I don't see anywhere in Google's disclosure where they will rotate traffic to appease advertisers. Nothing along those lines at all. It's about bid price, landing page quality and user targeting. Others in this thread have noted their campaigns excluded paid mobile clicks, but they are getting them anyway. Yet others have excluded ads in certain countries and claim Google is still sending them paid traffic from those countries. If I am paying for an ad service, I demand full disclosure from them so that I know whether or not the ad platform will meet my objectives. If Google is indeed directing unqualified traffic to ads, then Google needs to fess up and disclose it before emptying our wallets with worthless traffic.

[jrs79]

Glakes+ I don't think they are rotating traffic exactly. One idea is that they use broad, modified broad, phrase, and "close variants" to weave in this non-transactional traffic.

[reseller]

@glakes @samwest @Simon_H @heisje @hasek747 @jrs79 @WhiteHatTryHard

Many thanks for the most educating feedback to the question; Who could be the main beneficiary of Google Zombie Traffic?

Its a privilege to be in your company on this loooooooooong thread :)

[glakes]

@jrs79

I operate in a highly specialized niche with very few competitors. I don't see the same mix of buyer and non buyer traffic that you describe. On the bad zombie days, sales from Google drop by 90-95% from good days. In more generalized niches, I can see where the traffic weaving you speak of may be more common. Maybe Google is having a harder time with my site because it is narrowly specialized and there is less non buyer traffic available to weave in? That would also explain why the traffic quality is so poor on those days - because who knows where Google is pulling these people (assuming they are legit) from.

[Simon_H]

@glakes I am so sorry for mis-reading your comment. Totally agree that full disclosure is required; people need to know what they're paying for.

@jsr79 I don't see how that theory works. If G is spreading the transactional searches thinner and thinner, then existing sites will see the same conversion rates and less traffic volume. But this phenomenon is resulting in on/off lower conversion rates and the same or more traffic volume. More competition just drives the bids up so an existing player gets less impressions, less clicks, less sales for the same bid. It won't affect conversion rate. And there's no reason for Google to manipulate anything here; the competition itself will drive up the cpc so G makes more money without needing to do anything. Am I misunderstanding the theory?

[il_ekom]

A quickie: $zombies .= (($this->volume_options['traffic']['bad_bots'] == 'yes') || ( If the filters got skewed or being adjusted, more bots coming through and eating traffic. Many world-wide reports/blogs showing high bot traffic. Just adding to the confusion. Throw in some economy and presto, your conversions will fade....

[glakes]

@Simon

No worries, I should have been more precise in my explanation.

the competition itself will drive up the cpc so G makes more money without needing to do anything. Am I misunderstanding the theory?

Competition drives the CPC, but clicks have to be registered for us to get traffic and Google to make money. If the CPC is already so high that it does not justify the sale price on the goods, the only other way for us to get more traffic and for Google to make more money is to increase clicks. For this to occur, Google would have to show our ads to people not really interested in buying. Though expressed differently, jrs79 apparently and myself believe this is what Google is doing - mixing in unqualified traffic to meet some sort of quota (daily traffic quota for us, profit targets for Google, etc.).

[il_ekom]

Fact: I had a hot keyword and domain name even has keyword in it. For years my avg cpc was .68 USD. Now it is over 1.28 USD. I have many other keywords to concentrate on and/or I need to really dial in on phrases or over variations in adwords to compete on that particular keyword at a better cost. Anyway, I knew it was too good to continue at cheap price. Others found out that keyword converted rather nicely and drove up the CPC. And of course, the big shopping sites are registering searches on same keyword which in turn sends out even more bots to locate info or pictures on that keyword since it is a hot searched on term or keyword. I have seen this happen on several niches or keywords that start getting noticed. Everyone is hungry out there. Here I am coding and updating sites on a Sunday.

[samwest]

Is everyone checking site speed performance? Adsense and analytics can add extra latency. I was running 2 to 4 second page load times last week, but since removing adsense and analytics code (and using piwik instead) my page load times are now in the 0.01 to 0.8 range. That's seems to have improved conversions a bit even on the current anemic traffic volumes. Maybe the coming new generation of internet users are simply less patient. Maybe a problem at Google is inserting extra latency. Who knows. Test, test, test!

[reseller]

Hi folks

Should Google be responsible to fix Google Zombie Traffic problem which might be damaging businesses of millions worldwide?

[Simon_H]

@glakes Ah, I see. That's similar to what I've proposed in the past. But, again, I don't see why this would be in response to an influx of merchants using paid. It would be far better to let competition take its course as G would make more money that way.

However, this could be an unintentional consequence of Google responding to the iOS9/ad blocker situation in mid-September (that ties in with the time the jump in this phenomenon was reported). Google's ad engine detects a X% drop in ad impressions due to ad blockers, so it starts to show the adwords and shopping widgets on more serps than previously, specifically for longer tail search queries that Google hadn't previously classified as transactional. Those clicks will be less qualified. This will result in what is being seen. However, this explanation (1) doesn't account for why Google would be so unbelievably stupid as to send non-converting traffic to merchants for reasons already mentioned, (2) doesn't account for the on/off nature of the zombie traffic and (3) doesn't explain why this is being seen on organic too.

[hasek747]

Interesting observations about latency Samwest, thanks for the info.

[masterjoe]

I've only had about 2-3 days which actually converted this week. And they weren't nearly anywhere close to my consistent figures as the rest of this year. I feel pretty ripped off at this point.

I'm busting out the old blackhat tools and building crappy little niche sites that rank highly in the mean time, at least that'll keep the bills paid! If the traffic they send us is converting poorly, I'm going to respond by using PBNs and web 2.0's to secure some seriously top spots in search. I made some mistakes the first time around and decided to do away with that stuff, but this is literally the type of behavior that makes people go rogue on them. Negative SEO is also a very serious issue in my niche when new competition arises, and its very easy to destroy a new website. In fact, I recently did a spam blast on a hate group in Australia which got them knocked off to nowhere. Too bad they're still active on the Facebook page though.

Anyway, if they can do this without even so much as an announcement of an update, then I think everybody should at least be exploring Bing more seriously, and looking into facebook, pinterest, and instagram. I realize it may not be feasible for everyone, but there's not much we can do at this point until this idiocy on Googles part stops - and even if they don't fix it, you might be able to salvage some of your revenue stream.

[goodoldweb]

^ they are not going to fix anything. Its built into the algo and designed to ramp up the figures for next reporting season. Google are going to continue and tigthen the rope around everyones neck just as much as they can get away with.

This crap is going to continue until a total collapse of thier adwords system which will eventually become way to expensive to use. Until then, look for alternatives folks. "Google" is no more...



5 ecomerce websites + 1 ebay store (350 products) = 0 sales for more than 5 days and counting..... in the hottest possible shopping season. WTF!

[glakes]

That's similar to what I've proposed in the past. But, again, I don't see why this would be in response to an influx of merchants using paid. It would be far better to let competition take its course as G would make more money that way.

I don't see an influx of merchants using paid in my niche. What I feel is that the niche has topped out as far as merchants go and CPC is not rising over it's existing ridiculously high bids. With merchants not raising their bids, the only other option to extract more revenue from those search results is to show those results to untargeted users of Google search. That's what I feel they are doing, and they are doing it to increase profits. It would be a short term play for Google though. Advertisers, like myself, would leave Adwords and the CPC would drop.

It is possible that Google would want to display paid ads to untargeted users if they determine a percentage of ad blockers are blocking the display of ads for users with buyer intent. Though ad blockers have been around for quite a while, and I've only had the problem with Google zombies since September. Also, I believe it's safe to say Google's users don't turn off their ad blockers two or three days a week so that Google can send normal traffic to my site. Combined with the fact zombies impact organic too, it's safe to say Google is at control of their search results and is at the helm causing this chaos.

All fingers point to Google as being the responsible party, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Better SEO? I did and still hold high ranks in organic when I check. Use paid ads? I was the highest bidder on many keywords, and the zombies drained my money and patience rather quickly. Complain to regulators? My ranks are great when I check, and I have nothing publicly viewable to complain about. There's really no recourse, and if this goes full blown to everyone globally I could only imagine the damage it will do.

[WhiteHatTryHard]

For me the spook seems to mostly over for now.
Time on page is back up to 90% normal, Pages per Session also 90% of normal, conversions are recovering too.
So basically it was just 4 days of absolutely dreadful traffic. - Traffic that did not behave in the way it did literally since 2012.

Honestly I do not trust Google anymore. They literally have a monopoly. But somehow monopolies are OK in the tech industry these days.

This is where the international community and the governments need to step in and force the market into competition again.

[glakes]

@ WHTH

Maybe what you were experiencing was similar in effect but different in cause. Many of us with the zombie problem have been dealing with the same symptoms of bad traffic going into September. There's always the possibility you are getting your one or two days of good traffic then back to the zombies, just like the rest of us.

@ goodoldweb

they are not going to fix anything. Its built into the algo and designed to ramp up the figures for next reporting season.

I believe you are right, although we may just be the testing pool used to refine what it is they do make permanent.

5 ecomerce websites + 1 ebay store (350 products) = 0 sales for more than 5 days and counting..... in the hottest possible shopping season. WTF!

I don't know what to say other than that is terrible. In my previous post I stated how I feel - there is no solution. Poor traffic will never convert no matter how good the site is, ranks are or how well placed paid ads may be. It's those Google alternatives you speak of that is keeping me afloat. I hope you can do the same.

[WhiteHatTryHard]

A more plausible explanation for the disappearing sales could also be that the west is slowly drifting into a major economic crisis.

Europe is getting poorer by the minute and the first member states are going bankrupt, the US is increasing its spendings while its economy is being bought up by asian investors, china is preparing to stop using US dollar in trade, more and more oil exporting countries want to get rid of the US dollar too.

Maybe time to translate our sites to Mandarin?
The west has exhausted its economic power and now tries to keep the growth alive through wars, inflation and speculation bubbles.

But the sad truth seems to be that the west is getting poorer and people in the english speaking parts of the world have less money to spend. And we all know what goes away first if people have less money... luxury items... items that are not 100% necessary aka almost every product on the web.

[masterjoe]

A friend of mine believes the economic ceiling for the USA will be reached early November. I need to talk to him about repercussions. But I don't believe that is the cause of the issue regardless... it would not result in a steep, very quick decline of quality traffic in that timeframe like we've all been seeing.