Srange Traffic results today... lots of traffic, mostly direct (very abnormal)

Hello,

Wasn't really sure where to put this question but guessed that it's kind of marketing related.

Anyway, today I logged on to Google Analytics to see that todays traffic (which being Xmas day i'd expect to be low) was around the normal traffic mark I get for an average day (around 1000).

After looking at the traffic sources for the day I noticed that around 60% of the traffic was type in traffic (of around 600-700). I have done no advertising at all that I can think would cause this kind of traffic, havn't paid for anything, put the url on anything that would cause direct traffic to have a sudden surge like this, nothing.

I really can't think of any reason why there would be a sudden surge of direct traffic.

Anyway, i'm not complaining or anything, just thought this was a bit weird and wanted to know if anyone has any ideas of what could have caused it?

Thanks,
TS

 

Hmm, i do not know.

What was the bounce rate of your site. That will tell you more information on how long they roughly stayed on your website and this can establish whether or not it was a human based amount of traffic or whether a bot created all of this traffic.

I wish that i had that amount of traffic on my website hosting site.

Merry Christmas,
~ Mike

 

There was a 68.7% bounce rate...which is only a small bit larger than the average bounce rate of my site

 

Looks like some 302 redirect problems...
Searching your description, you will see a page from jux2.com.
Looking at that page, or it's Google cache, you will see your site listed with a redirect off of the jux2.com domain, and that is probably where your traffic is coming from - your keywords are triggering that page, or that link/description. (Use a server header checker to see the status codes.) Search on Google and this forum for '302 hijack' to get more information.

I have seen some changes in the way Google is handling 302 redirects recently, but I haven't fully analyzed the situation. (See mvandemar's blog, he sees something as well.)

From the looks of your site, this is a temporary glitch that should not have any long-term problems, and should fix itself with the next data refresh.

 

Thanks, thats probably what it is, never knew about this before. I'll look into it sometime later, for now i'm getting off the computer

 

Many hosting companies have their own tracking to show where your visitors have come from. A lot of webamsters don't realize this. Consider asking yours if they have one set up.

 

good point
worth asking about it

 

Yes, that is a good idea to setup tracking as what I have done for my sites. That way, you will know where the traffic are coming from.

 

...and what could I set up that analytics doesn't already tell me?

 

Well if it is already telling you, why are you asking?

 

It's telling me that it's direct traffic, I don't see how that can be narrowed down much if at all. That kind of traffic isn't usual and so I was asking what could have caused it.

I thought I explained it quite well in the original post.