[NEW] Negative SEO Method?

Hey guys,

Lately I've been experiencing something strange on a German site of mine. It appears to be that there are bots (at least they seem to be) visiting my site from all over the world, all coming from Google.DE (German Google) and all visiting the very same page.

I check the IP's/refer/et cetera with the WordFence plugin, I also block those visitors here, because...

It's strange to have quite some visitors from all over the world coming from Google.DE (Germany) and landing on one page.

So I started thinking, "Is this some good-mooded SEO 'GURU', or what?".

Because I know for a fact how extremely important your traffic (and source) have become for Google, my mind quickly turned for the worst.

See, these bots - they visit the page (from 'my' local Google.DE) whilst being in Australia for example. They all visit the very same page, all coming from the same Google.DE, even on the strangest times which doesn't make sense at all. But the next thing they do is...

LEAVE!

And that ladies and gentlemen, is seen as a bounce in Google's eyes - another quite important factor when it comes to keeping your rankings.

So, what do you guys think of this issue?

Is it true that an X-Rumer blast does little to none effect any longer, and people might therefore come up with tricks to screw someones analytics in order to make my rankings drop?

Very curious about your thoughts on this one ;-)!

Have you ever used any of those CTR services/bots? Like serpify/pandabot?

Took a while to remember those things, but no - haven't used tools or sources like those in years. Site resides on a fresh server and has never been close to such bots/services.

Also, most other bots (besides those of SE's) are all blocked - in case it mattered.

Well it does sound like Bot behaviour.
Do they all spend the same amount of time on the site or does it vary?

I'm quite sure it is. And yeah, it's happening as follows;

1) Initial land - coming from Google.de. All 'visitors' (bots) land on the same page.
2) They spend roughly 5-15 seconds on the page - don't click anything.
3) Leave - which worries me because it's seen as a bounce in Google's eyes.

So all in all, I'm relatively sure about those visitors being bots - however the question remains...

Is this a new negative SEO method?

Block the IPs?

Yes AleeGS, thanks for the 'great' (NOT) idea.

Have you even read the OP and my following posts?

How is the site monetized? Do you have adsense on the site?
Somebody might be sending you shit traffic trying to get you account banned.

No, not at all. It's a relatively simple webshop.

I'm really convinced this is a quite clever way to ruin someones rankings, simply because I used to have my own Google Search bot which boosted rankings like no links ever could.

With this knowledge, I'm beginning to become aware of the fact that pushing (fake) visitors to a site with a bot and make them do everything Google doesn't want them to do (like bouncing right after landing) would basically be a new form of negative SEO.

Anyone else (heavily) monitoring their (live) traffic with WordFence who has seen this issue occur?

Also, my ranks are dropping since the past week, the rankings for that one keyword, on the one page these bots visit and bounce from.

This fake traffic has been coming on and bouncing off my site for about 4-6 weeks now, so maybe I'm still lucky and will be hit harder the upcoming days.

Also have you checked the actual page they are landing on to see if it has been linked anywhere new?


You could be right about it being a form of NegSEO and I have thought it was possible but not sure the results would be consistent.

Yeah, checked it all. Link profile is clean and the site isn't placed anywhere that could do harm as far as I'm aware.

The fact that they all come from the same Google (German) and go to the very same page in consistent patterns made me block most hosts of these visitors quite early since I didn't trust it.

The visitors from those hosts are blocked now, but they still try to access the webshop on a daily basis.

Honestly, that's paranoid, and although I'll have to dodge a few bullets: Bounce rates do not affect rankings at all, this myth spreads at the moment, but it's bullshit. Google simply doesn't use these signals for rankings. Just ignore these bots instead of wasting your time.

Are you saying then that the bots are effectively finding your site in the results then hitting your site then bouncing?

I think that most definitely would effect your rank and I'm agreeing with your theory / suspicion.

On a similar note, wonder if it's possible to increase serp position by having a bot to click result and spend long time on site?

Maybe micro workers ?

davids355 said:

On a similar note, wonder if it's possible to increase serp position by having a bot to click result and spend long time on site?

Maybe micro workers ?

Click to expand...

Macdonjo3 actually tested this out: http://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/what-ive-learned-about-manipulating-serp-ctr.823908/

Additionally, there are some search engine tactics that involve searching for a keyword, quickly searching for a different keyword, clicking on the desired result, and closing the tab after a minute or so. If I recall correctly, doing this enough times can force the "Did you mean..." feature to appear. A couple of my "competitors" have been victims of this technique, and sometimes you'll see a competing website appear in the "Did you mean..." feature for their brand name.

starki said:

Honestly, that's paranoid, and although I'll have to dodge a few bullets: Bounce rates do not affect rankings at all, this myth spreads at the moment, but it's bullshit. Google simply doesn't use these signals for rankings. Just ignore these bots instead of wasting your time.

Click to expand...

Waisting my time huh... Okay!

davids355 said:

Are you saying then that the bots are effectively finding your site in the results then hitting your site then bouncing?

I think that most definitely would effect your rank and I'm agreeing with your theory / suspicion.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

As you can read in the following post by Zwielicht, you can kind of see that traffic is a huge factor in rankings.

It was a big enough reason to have a custom Google search bot made a few years back and enjoy the increased rankings coming from it. You do need some great proxies and good Google accounts to make this all work though.

Zwielicht said:

Macdonjo3 actually tested this out: http://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/what-ive-learned-about-manipulating-serp-ctr.823908/

Additionally, there are some search engine tactics that involve searching for a keyword, quickly searching for a different keyword, clicking on the desired result, and closing the tab after a minute or so. If I recall correctly, doing this enough times can force the "Did you mean..." feature to appear. A couple of my "competitors" have been victims of this technique, and sometimes you'll see a competing website appear in the "Did you mean..." feature for their brand name.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this! That's exactly what I ment.

I already placed a request for questions in his thread, because if his system is to simply click a link - and do nothing on the landing page itself, it'll only ruin rankings.

Bounces do seriously count, which makes total sense. Google is all about serving the best results. Therefore a bounce is a reliable sign that the page provided by Google for a certain keyword wasn't what the searcher wasn't looking for.

a similar thing is happening on my germany websites and it's also starting to happen on websites i have from different tlds.. i think i know your niche. maybe it's something competitors are doing on this specific niche.

interesting, i was actually thinking of exploring mechanical turk to increase my serp rankings using this method. Looks people have thought of the other way instead.

seoisstillalive said:

a similar thing is happening on my germany websites and it's also starting to happen on websites i have from different tlds.. i think i know your niche. maybe it's something competitors are doing on this specific niche.

Click to expand...

Interesting, please keep us posted !

don't you mind asking if your domain has any number on it's name ? example: donaldtrump33