Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?
-
Hey Moz,
I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced.
I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction.
I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website.
Nicer than most design/content.
They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here.
The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April.
Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough.
Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds.
There is no way that the traffic is real.
It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me.
How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?
-
Hi James! Did Luke's resource help? Do you still need some help?
-
Thanks for the link. I will check it!
- James
-
Hi James,
I recently came across this blog that has several different solutions to solving spam on Google over on Optimize Smart. It covers so many different kinds of spam it may be of some help. It's mainly Referral but does touch on Organic.
Hope you find what you need,
Luke
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Organic Traffic Drop of 90% After Domain Migration
We moved our domain is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com on April 4th. It was migrated to https://www.metro-manhattan.com Google Search Console continues to show about 420of URLs indexed for the old "NYC" domain. This number has not dropped on Search Console. Don't understand why Google has not de-indexed the old site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
For the new "Metro" domain only 114 pages are being shown as valid. Our search volume has dropped from about 85 visits a day to 12 per day. 390 URLs appear as "crawled- currently not indexed". Please note that the migrated content is identical. Nothing at all changed. All re-directs were implemented properly. Also, at the time of the migration we filed a disavow for about 200 spammy links. This disavow file was entered for the old domain and the new one as well. Any ideas as to how to trouble shoot this would be much appreciated!!! This has not been very good for business.0 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
If I block a URL via the robots.txt - how long will it take for Google to stop indexing that URL?
If I block a URL via the robots.txt - how long will it take for Google to stop indexing that URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
Prevent Google from crawling Ajax
With Google figuring out how to make Ajax and JS more searchable/indexable, I am curious on thoughts or techniques to prevent this. Here's my Situation, we have a page that we do not ever want to be indexed/crawled or other. Currently we have the nofollow/noindex command, but due to technical changes for our site the method in which this information is being implemented if it is ever displayed it will not have the ability to block the content from search. It is also the decision of the business to not list the file in robots.txt due to the sensitivity of the content. Basically, this content doesn't exist unless something super important happens, and even if something super important happens, we do not want Google to know of its existence. Since the Dev team is planning on using Ajax/JS to pull in this content if the business turns it on, the concern is that it will be on the homepage and Google could index it. So the questions that I was asked; if Google can/does index, how long would that piece of content potentially appear in the SERPs? Can we block Google from caring about and indexing this section of content on the homepage? Sorry for the vagueness of this question, it's very sensitive in nature and I am trying to avoid too many specifics. I am able to discuss this in a more private way if necessary. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Drop in traffic after redesign
Is it common for a site to see slight traffic drops after a site redesign (containing cleaner code, more usability and basically just being more helpful for the end user)? A new site of ours went live last Wednesday and has experienced a drop in traffic. If you have seen this in your own site, how did you recover? And how long did the recovery take?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Why am I not ranking in Google, but I am in Yahoo and Bing?
The website in question is: www.stbarthexclusives.com Our keywords are currently ranking for both Bing and Yahoo, but we're not appearing anywhere on Google. The website is being crawled successfully, but we still don't have any results. I hoping somebody can point me in the general right direction to fix/correct this problem. Additionally, there's a decent amount of "rel=canonical tags" on the website. If that helps your evaluation. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Endora0