8300 referrs from google for a single keyword, but not in serps?

[dareRock]

Not sure if I should be posting this here, but it seems the best for the moment.

I use AWSTATS on all my websites and one site's stats in particular has me baffled. When I check the 'keyphrase' in awstats for this site, i have 45.5% of all keyphrases are for a single keyphrase (8300)....when i check my 'reffering search engines', google is up there around 93.6% (9450), whcih tells me google is passing me most of the traffic from users typing in the keyphrase in question.

The wierd thing is, when i type this keyword in google, i dont show up in the serps anywhere...well not in the first 10 pages anyway.

Does anybody have any input into what may be happening.....could someone be stealing my traffic? which is probably a stupid question, but seems to be what it is getting narrowed down to.

Thanks in advance for any input to my issue.

[drall]

Scrapers and spammers will often spoof there refer field when they crawl your site to try and mask who they really are, we have this happen almost on a daily basis.

[dareRock]

hmmm.....so essentially, they scrape my site which causes the keyphrases (or topic they are scraping for) to artificaially inflate...does that make sense?

[drall]

Pretty much, what they do is take the url result for a phrase from G then set that up as the refer field on whatever prog they are using, your server will look at that field as the refer and spit it out in the log that way.

[jomaxx]

It's possible, I guess, but that doesn't sound like the most likely answer to me.

I don't know anything about AWStats, though. Can you see the actual raw Google URL? Do you have access to your raw site logs to see the URLs and IP addresses involved? Does this happen every day, or is it a one-time event?

[dazzlindonna]

Possibly, you are ranking for the keyword via image search? Or from another country?

[dareRock]

jomaxx...

no, i cannot see the raw urls from the stats program - i can download the raw log files through c-panel, but not sure how to read them since after extracting the contents, it yields an executable, that merely opens a shell window and closes it immediately - i could access them through SSH....can i read them that way, an if so, would i bee looking for, say 8300 of the same referring IP?

thnx

[drall]

run the raw logs through grep, tag the refer field then get the ip.

[Tropical Island]

...for the keyword via image search?

Do an Image Search. I had this happen and it drove me crazy. It turned out we are on the first page for images with this term.

[dareRock]

just checked G image search - nothing....as for the logs - grep - what string/pattern am i looking for? and which of the many files do i use within the log folder?

on a side note:
I found a file named an actual web address that carries a hefty filesize (can't post it here, but PM me if you want the addy) - went to the site and its a website with a similar theme to mine....?