received a massive amount of traffic today - possibly fraudulent

Hi folks,

I have received onto one of my forums a simply MASSIVE amount of traffic today.

I normally get 250-300, u/v per day on this site, and a click or two, and today I have had over 65,000 hits, all from the czech republic??

They started out of nowhere, the referring page doesnt have any link to my site, and I have deleted the page they were all landing on.

From the logs though, the visits looked real? different IP addreses, different routes through the site, different browsers, screen resolutions etc.

My worry is that I did have adsense on the landing page that got the bulk of the hits. Should I contact adsense to explain that this had nothing to do with me and what action I took?

Also, the logs at the moment read zero clicks so they might not even have a problem, but Id rather be safe than sorry...

anyone had an issue like this before?


MOG

 

research why they are coming to your site/referral traffic sites/etc.

You could notify AdSense to feel more safe.

 

hmm, yes contact google to be on the safe side, though i've never heard of that surge of hits in my place with different ips..

 

I know, seems really strange...

Ive spent over an hour analysing the logs and other than the fact that there has been zero activity on my forum from any of these people I cant see it being legit.

Not to mention the fact that there is NO link to my site on the site that is referring all of the traffic, which appears to be a czech forum (which is top 2000 alexa).

Anyway, after renaming the page that they are landing on the traffic has evaporated so I really am mistified as to what was going on...

 

How many clicks did you get from this 65,000 hits?

 

This may be a bot network. I would take off the adsense if its still there for the time being, just to be safe ad not to bring down your CTR to page impression ratio.

You might also want to save all these logs just in case you need them later.

 

zero, not one. not a single solitary click.

otherwise Id be really worried and emailling adsense right away instead of discussing it lol!!

 

If your CPM is through the roof, contact them!

 

check for any page redirection from the forum that you received the traffic
That kind of traffic has to come from a redirection and not just from referrals

 

that seems a likely explanation, but why would they?

 

They could have hotlink a picture of yours. Or any other file...

 

I agree. My first idea was a hotlink. What was on the landing page? Any pictures, etc... ?

 

could be a type of DoS attack

 

Could easily be a botnetwork dos'ing yoursite or hotlinking.

 

The changing of IP's isn't that mysterious... a simple Perl script using Tor would accomplish that in a few lines of code. The pathways through your web site, again, automation takes care of that with ease and grace. What it sounds like to me is that they are testing. If your forum is using a common software package, such as phpBB or some other popular setup, then they are probably testing against your web site, to make sure their auto-bots work and that they can control timing and randomness before using their creation against their own web sites. (for doing exactly what you are afraid they are doing to yours).

Auto-clicking on Adword ads and other ads is very possible by the way... so yes, I would report this to Google Adsense and get a dialog going with them. If you have been chosen to be the experimental rat then it is very likely that these bots are going to start clicking soon.

Parinoid? You bet-cha, and after doing the research on my latest blog articles, I'm even more paranoid than I was before. Recall that experimental rats, usually die.

 

since there is no clicks, just impressions, that tells that there was no human visit. looks like a bot to me also. do you have any online enemies who would like to get you in trouble with adsense?