High Russian Traffic To My Shape Ways Store

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by gordonlardi, Dec 2, 2016.

  1. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    Has anyone experienced this? look at a screen shot of Google analytics traffic to my store. it went from 2 to over 500 in about a week.
    Does anyone have an idea what this is and should i be concerned?
    upload_2016-12-2_19-2-6.png
     
  2. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Probably referral spam that is ruining your analytics data but otherwise harmless - either someone's bot hoping to boost the google rank of their own site by trying to add backlinks to it from e.g. your shop comments section, or just trying to make you look at that site where all the traffic appears to be coming from... searching for "web traffic samara oblast" even brings up an ad for a "SEO backlink snatcher" software from some dubious outfit in Samara.
     
  3. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    aha! Thanks for that insightful answer.
     
  4. elopez3d
    elopez3d Well-Known Member
    I also got increased traffic from Russia.
    And this is what their language showed up as...
    Little late though.
     

    Attached Files:

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  5. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Interesting - so the bot manages to put his clickbait link (what other topic would be near as controversial) in the language field of the user agent string ? (And most likely one of the characters in the link address is some utf8 look-alike to its ascii counterpart, they registered some malware-distributing site under a domain name that looks like google on first glance ?)
     
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  6. NoahLI
    NoahLI Well-Known Member
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  7. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    thanks guys
     
  8. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    check out the increase from yesterday
    upload_2016-12-3_12-30-37.png
     
  9. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Hehe. So according to the link NoahLi posted, the "G" in the fake google link is the lookalike character - phonetic symbol "voiced uvular plosive" from the IPA extension range of UTF8. Pity that the name of what appears to be a large and important commercial and cultural center of Russia is sullied by a bunch of petty criminals.
     
  10. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    does that mean they are using my computer in some way? Sorry im not very well informed in this area
     
  11. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    No, you would only put your computer at risk if you actively clicked on the link to their site that they apparently try to put in the google analytics data. Even then it could be that they would be content with just getting visits to their site from all over the world so that they can then market it as an attractive place to buy banner ad space on.
     
  12. NoahLI
    NoahLI Well-Known Member
  13. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Dodgy places may have dodgy javascript in them, or host ads that contain same, so probably not a good idea in general to click on the link unless with js and other active elements blocked.(Though if it is actually just some form of "SEO" by dubious means that they are after, they are just a public nuisance)
     
  14. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    i guess there is nothing better to do in Samara Oblast
     
  15. NoahLI
    NoahLI Well-Known Member
  16. gordonlardi
    gordonlardi Well-Known Member
    didnt click it but i probably would if not for your help, see below
    upload_2016-12-4_16-20-32.png
     
  17. 3DPrintNovesia
    3DPrintNovesia Active Member
    got the same problem since a few days.

    really annoying.
     
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  18. crnm
    crnm Well-Known Member
    This is a black-hat technique designed to advertise/present bad data on user supplied Google Analytics codes. There is nothing we can do to mitigate it. The abuse in question at no point touches our servers. Google Analytics data is populated from tracking beacon requests made to its intake servers. If you can block, modify, or construct your own requests, you can alter the data. By design, Google Analytics data can never be fully trusted as accurate.

    A quick google search for "Ghost Spam" or "Referer Spam" reveals a few insights if you're interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam
     
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  19. crnm
    crnm Well-Known Member
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