Traffic Bots - Negative SEO

R

Richard Jefferies

Newbie
Joined
Jul 2, 2019
Messages
8
Reaction score
3
We have very competive finance sites 10 in Australia which are constantly getting traffic bots 3-4 times a week bouncing our site 300+ times each time with 98-100 bounce rate. These sometimes come from a redirect page on porn site but not always.
Not seeing large damage but still loosing mimor positions first - third for exampel - but they are on main finance keywords in a competitive market.
Any ideas? Happy to pay for something onlgoing from some that specialise in this
What we have been doing so far :
- trying to block the blot - which then changes proxy Ip addres - we have started to block all no Australia traffic (aside fro Googe crawlers)
Secondly sending paid trafic to these sites to offset the bounce rate - costs $1000/mth

Any Ideas please welcome
 
Advertise on BHW
"sending paid trafic" unless they come from ads they are bot traffic
 
pepeneo said:
"sending paid trafic" unless they come from ads they are bot traffic
Click to expand...
Yeah there are micro managers - but this seesm like a BOT - any ideas on stopping them or do we have to respond in a similar way?
 
Sweetrevenge said:
When you do pop ads, you can filter bot traffic by using tools like Bemob and Voluum. I don't know if you can do that too with websites.
After just a little search on Google, i found many plugins which do that if your website uses Wordpress : https://www.google.com/search?q=bad+bot+blocker+wordpress+plugin&client=opera&hs=3Xd&sxsrf=ALeKk03w9Za7Y-BauIWFf3awOYPuPLWnRQ%3A1621086155242&ei=y8-fYK6cDtLsxgOi3ZGACg&oq=bot+blocker+plugin+wordpress&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMYADIGCAAQCBAeOgcIABBHELADUJ1WWLpeYOd1aAJwAngAgAH5CIgBnRmSAQk0LTEuMy4wLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6yAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz
Click to expand...
Thanks - this is mostly direct traffic - we rund MODX also so no wordpress option

But thank you!
 
Setup a .htaccess redirect for any of the sites that are sending to spam to you. ( redirect based on referral url)
Then setup a filter in google analytics to filter out any of the bad traffic.
Clickease is also a good tool for stopping bots getting in via google ads.
 
Wrote something similar to this a while back and I saw a public CTR manipulation service around the time which would bounce off your competitor first.

Even if you block the bot from accessing your site Google will still see the bounce rate back to the SERP. Just because it shows up on your analytics doesn't necessarily mean Google doesn't spot it as bot traffic but I can't think what you could reliably do against it.
 
SEOMadHatter said:
Wrote something similar to this a while back and I saw a public CTR manipulation service around the time which would bounce off your competitor first.

Even if you block the bot from accessing your site Google will still see the bounce rate back to the SERP. Just because it shows up on your analytics doesn't necessarily mean Google doesn't spot it as bot traffic but I can't think what you could reliably do against it.
Click to expand...
His bots are coming from an adult site. He didn’t mention that he was getting bot traffic from a Google result page. Google would only see those clicks if the referring site hosts Google tracking scripts.

OP, did you try to use any kind of 3rd party service for analyzing traffic, detecting bots, Ips with bad reputation, proxies, etc?
 
oldguyjoe said:
His bots are coming from an adult site. He didn’t mention that he was getting bot traffic from a Google result page. Google would only see those clicks if the referring site hosts Google tracking scripts.

OP, did you try to use any kind of 3rd party service for analyzing traffic, detecting bots, Ips with bad reputation, proxies, etc?
Click to expand...

The OP says it very rarely comes from a porn site and Google won't give a shit about that bouncing. Bouncing from the SERP is the issue.

Third-party services detecting bots wouldn't prevent this. They're mostly to stop them fucking your analytics or try and claim it back if it's hitting PPC ads.
 
SEOMadHatter said:
The OP says it very rarely comes from a porn site and Google won't give a shit about that bouncing. Bouncing from the SERP is the issue.

Third-party services detecting bots wouldn't prevent this. They're mostly to stop them fucking your analytics or try and claim it back if it's hitting PPC ads.
Click to expand...
Ah you are right, I misunderstood the OP. I don't think there is anything he can do server-side, like you said, Google sees the bounce on their own page. Did Google comment in these kinds of negative SEO attacks in the past? Are they at least aware of them and are they doing anything to try to detect them or disregard the damage they are causing?
 
I had a similar problem, and acting at server level was useful.
These my suggestions:
install: ultimate black bot, you can also configure auto-updates and get logs with some cron settings.
Apache: https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/a...ster/Apache_2.4/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf
Nginx: https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/n...ocker/blob/master/conf.d/globalblacklist.conf
enable cPHulk Brute Force Protection, ModSecurity and CSF (configserver security & firewall).
You should be more protected, whith this setup we fixed our problems and the best part are all free.
 
Blocking the requests server-side will save you a bit of bandwidth but doesn't address the problem. If Google considers it a real user bouncing back to the SERP they don't care what your server does or your analytics shows.

oldguyjoe said:
Ah you are right, I misunderstood the OP. I don't think there is anything he can do server-side, like you said, Google sees the bounce on their own page. Did Google comment in these kinds of negative SEO attacks in the past? Are they at least aware of them and are they doing anything to try to detect them or disregard the damage they are causing?
Click to expand...

The official word will be that they don't work and they filter out this kind of traffic.

Just because it shows up on analytics doesn't mean Google hasn't spotted it as bot traffic and the keywords dropping could be entirely unrelated.

However, AdWords isn't great at spotting useless bot clicks so the organic SERP won't be much better. I've done some limited testing with CTR manipulation (both positive and negative) but with so many factors you'd need to really do something like this on scale to tell if it really makes a difference.
 
Richard Jefferies said:
We have very competive finance sites 10 in Australia which are constantly getting traffic bots 3-4 times a week bouncing our site 300+ times each time with 98-100 bounce rate. These sometimes come from a redirect page on porn site but not always.
Not seeing large damage but still loosing mimor positions first - third for exampel - but they are on main finance keywords in a competitive market.
Any ideas? Happy to pay for something onlgoing from some that specialise in this
What we have been doing so far :
- trying to block the blot - which then changes proxy Ip addres - we have started to block all no Australia traffic (aside fro Googe crawlers)
Secondly sending paid trafic to these sites to offset the bounce rate - costs $1000/mth

Any Ideas please welcome
Click to expand...

its not coming from a specific country?
 
SEOMadHatter said:
Wrote something similar to this a while back and I saw a public CTR manipulation service around the time which would bounce off your competitor first.
Click to expand...

interested the result of that CTR manipulation. how long ago was it, and what kind of negative serp impact? thanks in advance
 
fb3003 said:
interested the result of that CTR manipulation. how long ago was it, and what kind of negative serp impact? thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I don't have any results to share I'm afraid. It was all part of a kitchen sink approach so my rankings went up and theirs went down - but there were a lot of different factors.

At one point I'd like to test it properly but it's just finding the time.
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top