Zombie traffic or inactive users
AFS Analytics suggests you identify sources that generate zombie traffic. This term defines poor quality traffic generated by users who do not interact with your site content. This traffic can be generated by robots but also by real people visiting your site for no apparent reason.
How to detect a Zombie user.
The Zombie visitor usually only visits one page of your site, but can also visit several. They are identified fairly easily because they are inactive, meaning they do not click on links, do not scroll pages, and do not generate any conversion. On the other hand, much of the Zombie traffic comes from developing countries you do not want to do business with. They are called Zombie visitors or inactive users.
Detecting zombie traffic
To detect zombie traffic, our web analytics service analyzes your visitor’s behavior on your website. In case of suspicious behavior, the visitor is labeled as a zombie visitor.
Accessing the statistical report
Select the zombie traffic option in the
Summary of statistics
This graph shows you the percentage of zombie traffic detected on your site.
List of Zombie visitors
This list displays the zombie visitors, you can easily identify their origin.
Daily and monthly statistics details
This report displays the number and percentage of zombie visitors affecting your traffic.
Zombie traffic sent by search engines
Webmasters have discovered that zombie traffic affects organic and paid traffic, especially that coming from Google. They suspect the search engine company is deliberately sending low quality traffic for commercial reasons.
Some think that the search engine is trying to send a steady volume of traffic to their customers so that they continue to advertise. If a PPC ad does not generate traffic, the client will stop the campaign.
Another theory, while taking up the scenario above, establishes that Google would send low-quality organic traffic to sites that did not advertise on the search engine. This process would push sites to advertise via AdWords to increase their conversion rates.
Others believe that Google is not responsible for Zombie traffic, but that it depends on several factors, such as a change in site positioning in search results, economic situation, weather or general morale.
Another hypothesis conveyed by cybercrime specialists, says that this traffic generated by clicks farms or robots, would be the work of organized crime groups wishing to extort money from the search engine.
How to reduce Zombie traffic.
Many web analytics experts believe there is no quick fix to mitigate zombie traffic from organic sources. We just need to monitor its evolution and identify the keywords that generate it.
On the other hand, if you have PPC campaigns, you should identify campaigns that generate unskilled traffic and stop them as soon as possible. AFS Analytics offers many tools to achieve this, including traffic quality statistics from referring sites and the percentage of Zombie traffic. You can also use the search functions in the report listing visitors.
For each marketing campaign, you have access to its conversion rate and return on investment, carefully examine the results and stop them if you see poor results.
You can also decide to eliminate the zombie traffic generated by the robots, so do not hesitate to use AFS traffic filters.
In conclusion about Zombie traffic
Unfortunately, you cannot remove all zombie visitors or unnecessary traffic from your site. However, by following the recommendations above, you can greatly reduce its impact and the costs it generates. AFS Analytics provides you with all the analyses necessary to identify its origin and more generally to evaluate the quality of the traffic to your site.
Note: Detection of zombie visitors requires a premium subscription plan and version 7 or higher of the tracking code pasted on your website pages.
By AFS Analytics, Monday, July 10, 2017