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]

[ecommerceprofit]

Yesterday amazing - today horrible - never had these ups and downs until very recently

[jrs79]

Still don't understand why I don't see it on any ecommerce site. Not even the one that recently relaunched a couple weeks ago and immediately #### the bed to the point where we had to turn off the paid traffic, the shopping, and halt the email campaigns til we got it fixed. Even THAT site is getting more conversions (with about 20% less traffic)

I don't actually see it either even though I proposed my theory. I will say that the sites that I manage are brands (B2B, healthcare) that all existed pre-internet and would probably live if not thrive without the internet.

That is not a shot at anyone's business that posts here as I know there are a lot of real businesses in this mix. Also, not many of mine are ecomm. They are mostly complex sales ( long sales cycles with multiple decision makers).

Thought that the additional information might be useful.

[masterjoe]

Also experiencing very poor traffic today. Yesterday was excellent.

If this isn't blatant manipulation on G's part then I don't know what is.

[samwest]

Once again, a day with relatively "normal" traffic, yet my "signup" page is like Kryptonite.

[reseller]

Hi folks

In theory; do you think doing a 301 moved permanently redirect from your current domain (which has been affected by Google Zombie Traffic) to a new fresh domain would solve the problem?

[samwest]

^ no

[glakes]

Instead of having 2-3 days of good traffic a week in September, now I'm lucky to see 1. Today was zombie filled, and Google just could not figure out who to send to our site. Traffic is good but no sales and no surprises really.

[Simon_H]

Organic traffic is the highest it's been in the past few months, yet organic conversions are almost non-existent. However, paid (Google Shopping) is converting very well indeed at the moment.

Also, answering some other @aakk9999 questions from earlier:

- The landing pages hit are almost identical across days of high organic conversions vs low organic conversions. We did some analysis earlier and it really is identical. 36% product pages, 15% homepage, etc.
- Bounce rate and other session data seem no different between zombie and non-zombie. So the zombies are either real people who can't find what they want yet spend time on site looking, or intelligent bots. We've been tracking bots recently and I can confirm that we are getting hit by intelligent bots, who navigate multiple pages and complete sign-up forms under various names. So they wouldn't be shown as a bounce. The bots are based in Russia and switch IP addresses within a range.

[isellstuff]

My sales today are lackluster as well. Nothing like yesterday. Average order size is quite low. Historically, this is a bad week for my website though. Sales dropped off a cliff this evening, but the first game of the World Series has started.

[Simon_H]

Guys, just had a thought. Is your domain name:
1) an exact match search term or similar?
2) short, i.e. under 10 characters?
3) A verb or action?

[masterjoe]

My websites are brand names. None of the above.

I've also noticed an increase if complete nonsense messages come through my contact form, asking very vague questions (which have nothing to do with the site) or leaving it blank altogether. Could it be bots?

[reseller]

@samwest

I consider you as the library of Google Zombie Traffic :)

Here is my question. Do you recall Tedster mentioning possibility that sites which have been hit previously by Panda or/and Penguin updates are most likely to be hit by Google Zombie Traffic too?

[Jez123]

Could it be bots?

I think you might be forgetting how stupid some customers can be! Often I will get quiet periods, lulls in busy times and all the "crazies" seem to come out in this time. It's like it's internet beginner's day. L plate surfers :)

[Shepherd]

Is your domain name:
1) an exact match search term or similar?
2) short, i.e. under 10 characters?
3) A verb or action?

yes.

[Simon_H]

@masterjoe and @Shepherd Thanks! @samwest also has a good non-brand domain name. So that's 3 out of 4. Anyone else with short/exact match/verb domain names?

@masterjoe Are you actually seeing the zombie phenomenon, i.e. no change/increase in traffic volume, big drop in conversions? Your comments allude more to a drop in traffic volume, so just checking? Regarding junk form submissions, yes that sounds exactly like bots. Don't underestimate the intelligence of bots! We're getting a load of them at the moment and they're very good at form filling. They'll see a 'name' field and fill it in with a name, etc. We'll get 50 of them in a day with the same or similar name, junk email addresses, all submitted from the same range of spam IP addresses in Russia.

@reseller When you're not posting about overthrowing Google or predicting which days next week Google will send bad traffic to the whole internet, do you read what anyone else posts? The Panda/Penguin question was already asked. Most (but not all) people seeing zombie traffic were hit by Penguin, some by Panda. So a possible correlation but many people on this forum will be here because of Panda or Penguin, so it's not necessarily connected with zombie traffic. I'm guessing your website has major quality content issues?

[masterjoe]

@Simon, I have maintained about the same level of traffic since I got hit by Penguin last year. No significant drop in keyword rankings (apart from a random hit, which I lost 80% of my traffic which has since recovered)... that's exactly what I've been seeing too. I get them every few days, although this never happened before. They don't follow the typical spam type message and don't get filtered out.

[Simon_H]

@masterjoe Thanks! Just checking. That sounds like exactly what we're see too.

[goodoldweb]

This may come handy:

All about rank brain
[searchengineland.com...]

[samwest]

Here is my question. Do you recall Tedster mentioning possibility that sites which have been hit previously by Panda or/and Penguin updates are most likely to be hit by Google Zombie Traffic too?

The original zombie pattern discussions were actually BEFORE Penguin (4/24/2012) and Panda (4/11/2011) were ever born.

My observations of ON/OFF traffic patterns started right after the MayDay update which I remember clearly to be May 18 2010. It was the first day in 10 years that I had zero sales (14 sales the day before). From That point on, it's been a constant, slow decline year after year.

Tedster always seemed to think Zombie Traffic was due to some "traffic shaping" mechanism and possibly only to a specific "test pool" of sites.

You can read the thread that pretty much started the Zombie traffic issue here: [webmasterworld.com...]
My comment at 1:13am on June 6 2010 seems to be the first mention of "suddenly non converting traffic". That was back when I used "backdraft7" as my username.

BTW - I'll report in that I'm seeing SLIGHTLY better conversions today. Last three days were horrible.
In light of getting two sales before 10am , I'd have to call this an ON day so far. Traffic is moving along at what I'd call a "human" pace.

[masterjoe]

goodoldweb, I had a read over that article. Apparently rank brain takes the data offline, processes it, then brings it back more "refined". there is some good information there about how Google creates "vectors" from search information and how it learns things.

Unfortunately, I just don't have hours or weeks to nerd out on that stuff. If anyone can understand the concept (a link is posted for a test tool), then maybe we might be able to figure out how it works a bit better.

So far though, this doesn't really seem like anything too groundbreaking - in fact, it sounds a lot like LSI keywords and related information.

[reseller]

@samwest

Many thanks for a very informative feedback. Much appreciated.

[samwest]

Of course it looks like my prediction for the day is off...while it's raining traffic, non of it is converting again...and back to referral spam.

[masterjoe]

I saw your post and had hopes it wasn't going to be a zombie day today. However, I have had 1 sign up, no sales. Piss poor as yesterday. The only day that converted this week was 2 days ago... what a bunch of money grabbers. It is so obvious they are doing something to the results to consistently have poor traffic days vs quality.

I've finally gotten around to Bing webmaster tools and I'm liking it so far although it will take some time to figure out what the differences are to getting ranked there. I might even try some PPC to see how it fares. Either way I'm taking my money elsewhere.

[ecommerceprofit]

horrible day here too

[wgchris]

Horrible day here as well. Really horrible since mid/late sept.

Also, did "Goals" get moved in GA (or removed?) I must be losing it... I'm not seeing it in my UI.

[goodoldweb]

Count me in the horrible day lot. Noting but spam and virus infected emails the last few days. Zero sales across all domains. What a terrible week, what a poor piss month. And the really sad part is that this obvious manipulation of traffic is just getting worse.

[samwest]

And the really sad part is that this obvious manipulation of traffic is just getting worse.

But not for Google, so expect it to continue...

I'm looking into better ways to get mobile users to pay, but that's like putting the cart before the horse, since users must first accept and adopt systems like Google Pay (blech) or Samsung Pay which is about to launch in the US.
How many of your mobile users convert into sales? I'll guess very few. A new thread perhaps?

[glakes]

Horrible seems to be the theme for the day, and I'm in that group too. Is it just me or are the good days few and further between?

[seoskunk]

Maybe all of this is down to google RankBrain, I personally not sure about the whole thing, whether its zombies or just people research online then buy from Amazon.

[reseller]

Suppose Google is showing users irrelevant (or wrong) snippet title of your link on the SERPs! As such, even if your link is #1 on the SERPs you would be receiving users who would be disappointed once they land on your landing page because they simply wouldn't find what they have been looking for. Don't expect conversions from such unsatisfied and disappointed visitors. Welcome to Google Zombie Traffic!

You may ask; but how would such a thing happen? Maybe you would find the answer here:

Google’s Matt Cutts: Why Google Will Ignore Your Page Title Tag & Write Its Own [searchengineland.com...]