"ZOMBIE TRAFFIC" Separating fact from fiction & emotion

[FishingDad]

This recent discussion about "ZOMBIE TRAFFIC" is just utter nonsense. What are people saying, anything worth while or just a communal <snip> because sales are down on the norm? The talk is firmly in the tin foil hat area.

Are you talking about SERPs, if so why, if your positions are dropping then that's that. If positions not dropping are you seriously saying Google is sending you people they know will not buy from you !? REALLY?!

Are you talking about PAY PER CLICK? if so then your talking possible click fraud then, aren’t you?

Giving any constant period on the internet, people buy or they don't buy and there's many many factors why they will one day and might not the next day.

[edited by: goodroi at 5:55 pm (utc) on Nov 10, 2015]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to keep the discussion on a professional level [/edit]

[mrengine]

Even though I have not been posting in this thread, the zombies are still with me. Instead of wasting time and money on this problem, I scaled back Adwords spending to the bone and am working on marketing elsewhere. That's taking a bit of time and have not posted an update in a while because I think the zombies are a permanent feature that has driven me in directions away from Google.

[ecommerceprofit]

Finally a good day...zombies for 4 days...that was not fun.

[masterjoe]

Strange econmerce, I've had zombies today, zero conversions after a week of conversions daily. Hoping it bounces back soon. Perhaps our sites may be in different categories which are under this zombie issue, keep us posted.

[Jez123]

I have had 1 conversion since Thursday last week. This is following a record week the previous. Traffic is normal levels... Results seem OK when I check... May is usually the busiest month of my whole year...

[ecommerceprofit]

2 days without zombies. Late tonight though looks like they are back. I love watching real time visitors on Google analytics. Whenever my traffic shoots up that's when the zombies visit...I actually like it when the traffic is at normal levels.

[ecommerceprofit]

Actually the day turned ot well...about 12 hrs of zombies and then recovered...cpc on ads were in acceptable zone

[SEOcomfort]

I am seeing the zombies again as well. I have noticed that my long tail rankings are improving and these rankings are for high-converting queries (ie.,bulk 'product type' obviously someone is looking to buy in bulk, you don't search for information about bulk whatever, you search for the individual for info and purchase when searching the bulk).

I wonder if Rankbrain is being tested and the results from this test are below par, resulting in low converting traffic for a high-converting query? Rankbrain is getting confused with what people are looking for when it comes to long tail queries? Any thoughts?

[Robert Charlton]

Complete conjecture here... but I don't think these are from live RankBrain tests. That was a theory I'd tossed out to accommodate the observation many were making that both AdWords and organic results seemed to be showing similar patterns. RankBrain was the current new thing that possibly could be affecting both types of traffic.

As it turns out, Google has said that RankBrain is not "trained" live, but rather is being modified on an offline test bed, which might preclude training artifacts... and I posted about this on one of the RankBrain discussions we've had.

That said, early Panda was also not initially updated live... albeit it eventually evolved to become part of the core algo. I suppose that this is a possibility with RankBrain as well... but that's in the realm of much conjecture for now.

I believe that Simon_H has been looking into the question of whether RankBrain might be rewriting queries that Google hasn't seen, prior to both AdWords and organic input, but I don't see how these randomly spaced rewrites could result in the kinds of patterns zombies historically have produced.

Just a reminder, though, that not all conversion fluctuations are zombie traffic.

[SEOcomfort]

Good points. With so many moving parts and integrations on Google's side, it's becoming more difficult to pinpoint what is happening. And with less confirmations from Google, that just adds to the difficulty.

I agree that not all conversion fluctuations are zombie related but when there have been no major changes to my site and rankings have been overall improving over the past few weeks, it's hard to say it's fluctuations in conversions when my daily conversion is "x" amount and today it's nothing. Usually about this time of day I have a handful of conversions with less traffic. Not saying anyone has argued my traffic is indeed zombie traffic. Just presenting what's happening on my end.

[Simon_H]

I should have posted this long ago, but... For those seeing the zombie phenomenon on paid traffic, especially Google Shopping, could you try the following and share what you see?

Go to Adwords, click on your campaign, click an ad group that sees the zombie effect, then 'keywords', then 'search terms'. Set the date range to a custom period where the zombies are off, i.e. where you're seeing a consistently good conversion rate (ideally several days, but 1 day is fine if you get a lot of clicks), then turn compare on, then set the comparison date range to the same number of days during a custom period where the zombies are on, i.e. bad conversion rate. (Ideally your bids shouldn't have changed much between the two periods and the two periods should be the same days of the week.) Click on the '+' next to the impressions column to show a comparison of the two date ranges, and sort by 'Change'.

This will show you all the search terms that have received the biggest difference in impressions between the on and off periods, i.e. a good idea of how Google is changing which SERPs it's dropping your ads into. Theoretically, there should be minimal difference between the two if all else is equal. So if you see a search term that's getting a *lot* more impressions on one period vs the other, something is up.

You may also want to switch the 'change' sort between low->high and high->low to see things the other way round.

When we do this, we can see massive differences in impressions of certain search terms. This suggests unnatural behaviour, either due to Google changing which SERPs it's showing our PLAs, or by deceptive 'users' that Google is failing to filter out.

Also, this test doesn't show you when Google is completely omitting your ads from results when it should be displaying them. We have examples where we search for almost exact match product names, yet Google doesn't display our product in the Shopping widget in the standard SERPs, but shows just a single unrelated product by another retailer there, i.e. there is plenty of space in the Shopping widget but Google chooses not to show our product. But when you click through to Google Shopping itself, it correctly shows only our product and not the product of the other retailer. This happens when our product bid is low and suggests that Google is omitting well-matched low bid products when there is space for such products, which is plainly wrong. Does anyone see similar examples?

[aristotle]

Did you test to see what happens if you stop bidding on those particular keywords

[Simon_H]

You don't bid on keywords with Google Shopping, so no.

[samwest]

My recent Zombie pattern involves getting one conversion between 5 and 7 am, then nothing all day. I used to cheer when I had a very early morning sale, but now I cringe because the rest of the day is likely shot. Usually signifies a 24 hour outage of quality traffic. Today is just such a day.

[ecommerceprofit]

** When we do this, we can see massive differences in impressions of certain search terms. This suggests unnatural behaviour, either due to Google changing which SERPs it's showing our PLAs, or by deceptive 'users' that Google is failing to filter out **

Today was a non-zombie day for us. We did as Simon asked and compared to 5-22-16 which was also a Sunday and a non-converting "zombie" day. There were large differences...will work on this some more to see what we find in coming days...

The search terms don't seem crazy on zombie days though. They seem fine...I need a better sample but at first blush this is what I see. You say, "or by deceptive 'users' that Google is failing to filter out" but I'm not so sure they are being deceptive...I think they are just not "good customers" As I have mentioned in other posts, during zombie days, users with non working credit cards go up...multiple attempts are made due to credit card declines...either they are trying to commit fraud or they just do not have enough credit...or they are just not smart...avs errors and cvv errors go up.

Google has many users who are logged into Google when they search so Google has their search history, etc. So some algorithm / learning program, etc. could be using this data to improve their engine results over the long term or something else.

[Simon_H]

Yes, the search terms seem fair for us too. We're certainly not being dropped into completely irrelevant SERPs, although there are still a good many where we shouldn't be appearing, e.g. non-transactional, where we don't sell the specific product the customer is looking for. But also this test still doesn't provide enough data to determine (1) whether the impressions are from the Shopping widget within the standard SERPs or from Shopping itself as these are fundamentally different algos, CTRs, etc, (2) which products are being shown for which search terms and (3) what are the total number of searches for each search term, e.g. if you get 50 impressions for a search term, that could be 50 out of a total of 500 searches where you're being allocated the low quality searchers. But the test does at least give you some idea if there are fundamental differences of impressions between the zombie and non-zombie days, and there do seem to be for us.

In terms of my "deceptive users" comment, I meant the following... If on one day you get 50 impressions for a certain obscure search term and on another day you get zero impressions, then the probability that 50 users searched for it on one day but not the other is ~zero. The only likely explanations are either Google is dropping you into the SERPs for that search term on one day but not the other OR the same user ran the same obscure search 50 times. If it's the latter, I'd call that deceptive. But I think the former is more likely, i.e. Google is trying your products for different search terms.

Also, the total number of daily clicks/cost is similar across zombie and non-zombie days, which suggests this isn't click fraud by third parties. I believe this is entirely Google playing with which PLAs appear for which search terms. However, it's unclear what is triggering these changes, e.g. is this triggered by competitor bid changes, is it simply the algo testing different scenarios, etc.

[samwest]

Seems this conversation moved back to the June Update topic...and the SERT site. Mods where are you?

[mosxu]

Is anyone seeing less zombie traffic but also a drop in the rankings in the last two weeks or so? I also wonder if this zombie traffic is a result of pogo-sticking spam? There are SEO companies managing like 100 000 geeks (people working from home whatever) getting instruction who to click on and how long to stay and also engage more or less. I mean if a few of these geeks in a row are not engaging may say to Google that our site is irrelevant and quality traffic gets cut?

[aristotle]

managing like 100 000 geeks (people working from home whatever

Or maybe they're managing 100 000 zombies working from home whatever

[ecommerceprofit]

Aristotle...what is your problem? You have an agenda...I don't know what it is but I know you have one.

[mosxu]

Analysing unusual patterns of traffic, I would say that it takes coordinated action of zombies (people working from home whatever) to click through search results including ads, land on our sites and mimic a poor user experience to get google to think that our sites are crap and google stops sending quality traffic altogether.
I would say that Google is only concerned with providing great user experience and has filters in place that get triggered when a lot of users compared to your normal traffic get a bad experience.

[aristotle]

Aristotle...what is your problem? You have an agenda...I don't know what it is but I know you have one.

well ecommerceprofit-- in this case my "agenda" was to try to inject a little humor into Webmaster World, but apparently my attempt fell flat.

In any case the use of the word "zombie" has always seemed misleading to me. In my view we should be talking about mis-matched traffic -- I think that's a better description.

[aristotle]

Analysing unusual patterns of traffic, I would say that it takes coordinated action of zombies (people working from home whatever) to click through search results including ads, land on our sites and mimic a poor user experience to get google to think that our sites are crap and google stops sending quality traffic altogether.

mosxu -- Do you mean that some SEO company might be trying to use thousands of fake zombies to sabotage competitive websites' Google rankings?

I think that similar ideas have been mentioned here before, but I would prefer a simpler explanation.

[mosxu]

correct

I think filters get triggered when enough zombies are faking bad experience on our sites

[mosxu]

this may be the cause that triggers the mis-matching of the traffic as you like to put it, if enough users are faking bad experience than you get only junk traffic after

[glakes]

Do you mean that some SEO company might be trying to use thousands of fake zombies to sabotage competitive websites' Google rankings?

correct

I think filters get triggered when enough zombies are faking bad experience on our sites

There are 4 or 5 people on this forum that I know of who started getting zombified around the end of September 2015, me included. I know of others outside of WebmasterWorld that are in this category too, most of which operate independent ecommerce websites. The likelihood of all our websites being targeted by some sinister SEO company or companies at the same time is next to nill, and we've discussed this previously. It's Google's algorithm sending us deadbeat zombies in bulk and nobody else.

I would recommend that if Google is sending you traffic that is crap, flush Google down the toilet. There are other opportunities out there for traffic without all the nonsense Google BS.

[samwest]

I'm giving Adwords a test run again today. So far non interactive traffic is all I have gotten. They chew up your funds and yet nothing is converting. Last week I had nothing for days, then kaboom, 3 conversions in under and hour, then off again. It's pretty obvious that something is switching over and when it does, the filters stop working momentarily. I fear the day when they make it bounce-less, but it's scary close enough already.

In any case the use of the word "zombie" has always seemed misleading to me. In my view we should be talking about mis-matched traffic -- I think that's a better description.

The term itself was meant to be a humorous analogy to zombie behavior. If you need a refresher, just watch some old Ed Wood films. I love how the term just gets under some people skin. I did pick up on the humor artisotle, so it didn't fall completely flat.

BTW- since zombies are dead they are mostly black and white, which fits into the Google zoo.

[mosxu]

CTR manipulation is the biggest thing in SEO these days, trust me if you have 100 visitors a day coming from a certain search term, with a 100 people working from home they will make your site disappear away from any real human searching for that term again

[ecommerceprofit]

aristotle - my apologies then...I was in roundtable forum mode...

[glakes]

I'm giving Adwords a test run again today.

I tested over a period of 5 days and the cost per conversion was just under $15. Prior to September 2015, the cost per conversion was under $3. The same campaigns and keywords had consistently produced $3 or less conversions for a number of years prior to Z DAY (the day the zombies hit). My average transaction total is $44. Clearly I'm losing my ass at $15 a conversion plus the credit card processing fees.

The level of manipulation by Google is quite high and easy to see. Imagine shirts (my ecommerce site is not fashion) with different sizes. One day Google sends buyers of small shirts, zombies take over for a few days then medium shirts sell. A few more days go by and Google suddenly sends buyers to large shirts. Meanwhile Bing and Yahoo have a mix of sales as one would expect from search results that are not heavily manipulated and overtaken by zombies. That's search traffic. On Amazon I am doing great and see a mix of sales each and every day. It's important to note a recent survey indicated Google is second to Amazon for product searches. See [searchengineland.com...] Therefore the largest percentage of buying traffic does not even bother with Google.

[samwest]

Therefore the largest percentage of buying traffic does not even bother with Google.

And there's the crux of the biscuit! Buying traffic no longer searches Google. Besides a few million other factors, that's mostly the truth.
When I buy, I actually avoid Google and go directly to the Amazon warehouse. I do FBA too and I see much more natural sales patterns on Amazon.