<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nRecognizing Bad Bots In The Suspect Gallery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrafficbot4free.club\u201d. Just the name of it sounds spammy. But that\u2019s exactly the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The creators of this bot want you to recognize that it is sending you free traffic. They are trying to attract the attention of website owners who want to inflate their traffic for free. But why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firstly, interested website owners will go to the website to check it out. Hey presto! They have generated traffic to their own site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secondly, there\u2019s probably some kind of signup form to order more traffic. I strongly advise against engaging with this. And not just because it\u2019s against the rules of Google and all reputable advertisers. You may find yourself the target of viruses and other nefarious activities if you get involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other variants in the Suspect Gallery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n You may see entries with different extensions, like \u201ctrafficbot4free.pw\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are similarly named bandit bots like \u201cGetbottraffic4free\u201d. They are not difficult to spot as being bandits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using Google Analytics Countries To View A Suspect Gallery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n I set up a brand new WordPress site on the first of January this year and didn\u2019t do much with it for a week. No about page, no content, nada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on its second day of creation, it had a little spike of 13 visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this case, the Acquisition Referrals report was empty. So I switched to \u201cSource\/Medium\u201d (directly above \u201cReferrals) and saw that all the traffic was \u201cdirect\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, the brand new domain name had been entered into a browser address bar thirteen times within 48 hours of registration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Geographic Location Report<\/h3>\n\n\n\n With no clue from referrals, it was time to use a different report within Google Analytics: the Audience Geographic Location report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Expand the Audience reports in the left-hand menu, and click on Geo. From here, choose the \u201cLocation\u201d option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThis is what I saw: a suspect gallery with one suspect!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nYes, all the visitors were from just the one country i.e. China. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are plenty of companies that track new domain registrations for various reasons. One of those reasons is to gather contact details from new websites. The purpose is to try to sell services like SEO or link exchanges to the website owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to get the contact information, these companies will use a bot to trawl the new website for emails or contact forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What To Do With Minor Suspects In The Gallery?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n There was only one suspect in the gallery (using this report). Not a difficult case to solve!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thirteen visits aren\u2019t putting any strain on the host resources, and I wasn\u2019t too bothered about it. It\u2019s possible to block traffic from specific countries, but I didn\u2019t see repeat visits after those first few days. I determined this to be a minor irritant and took no action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A while ago, I was looking at Google Analytics for a young website and I noticed a spike in traffic. This is usually a social media mention. but I noticed it was due to a new traffic source: \u201ctrafficbot4free.club\u201d. That didn\u2019t look right. This article will show you how to identify bad bot traffic using … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}