This site's traffic over last year - What happened?!?!?! :)

[Doug]

I was looking back at google analytics for the year and noticed a startling thing! Back around two dates, December 28th 2012, and may 15th 2013, we experienced OVERNIGHT drop by 50% both times in traffic and a 30% increased bounce rate at that same may 15th date. Has anyone had issues accessing the site this year, or has an idea of whats going on?! Did I miss a couple uprisings and mass exodus'?

[machew01]

Doug,

I do not have an answer, but I'm going to reply anyway. Could the data gathering facility have been down temporarily on those dates?



mac

[Doug]

I dont think so.. if you look at this graph, views vs bounce rate, its pretty clear something major happened twice, and over the span on 1-2 days each time.

http://www.r1150r.org/pics/stats.png

[Doug]

BTW it also looked like a different problem happened the second time because of the bounce rate?! I am not too up on these stats. Do we have any IT wizards in here?!

[Boxer]

In January the Bash planners began their planning...then in May was the Bash..... Just sayin'

[Doug]

I dont follow. Can you tell me more?

[AZBMWRIDER]

I'm a moderator on an airhead site, R65.org .

The server for this site is in the UK .

On occasion we've had issues with members in North America , OZ, and Asia not being able to access the site, the UK and European members did not have this problem .

Possibly a server issue with this site ???

[Doug]

I looked at the traffic from various countries before and after and the ratios are pretty much spot on.

[peels]

interesting....

personally no issues.

Hey....those could me Mondays back at work after holidays, or long weekends. Everyone googling to get through the week....just to get to the fun days.... I have seen this phenomonon at other sites I frequent. LOTS of traffic leading up to, then BAM! it dies when everyone goes back to real life....

Just a thought.

also, as mentioned before, when many folks from one site plan a get together, they inadvertently kill their own site briefly during the event. LOL Ive seen that MANY times.

[Doug]

but the traffic was steady for months before the drop, and the drops were consistent after! This is so strange!

[sjbmw]

I would make a guess and attribute this to spam bots.
While we have been taking steps to help us in preventing them from polluting the board there are still bots out there hamming away.

We try and get in front of them with account creation alerts (and immediate deletion) but that would not slow down the traffic if the bots are pinging previously created accounts.

We are back to a half dozen new crap accounts per day after somewhat of a lull over the past weeks.

[peels]

spam. my favorite

half a dozen bogus accounts PER DAY?

eek. I have cried about 1 per WEEK on another site. LOL

spam bots must like beemers. smart bots.......

[angellr]

spam. my favorite

half a dozen bogus accounts PER DAY?

eek. I have cried about 1 per WEEK on another site. LOL

spam bots must like beemers. smart bots.......

Actually from experience, they suck big time! What you do not see happening behind the scenes is a good thing (not complaining, just commenting) and keeps your experience here a good one. The numbers used to much worse.

[peels]

spam. my favorite

half a dozen bogus accounts PER DAY?

eek. I have cried about 1 per WEEK on another site. LOL

spam bots must like beemers. smart bots.......

Actually from experience, they suck big time! What you do not see happening behind the scenes is a good thing (not complaining, just commenting) and keeps your experience here a good one. The numbers used to much worse.

yep thats kind of what I was saying. The hassle of just a few is bad enough.. Appears you guys have your hands full. I certainly appreciate the effort.

[Doug]

THANK GOD FOR THE MODERATORS!!!!

I definitely couldn't do this without them!! They never complain, they just do! Silently moderating and smoothing things out, handling spammers and keeping an eye out. Thanks for all you do guys!

"Folks, have you thanked a moderator today?!?!"