Unusual world wide interest during May 2022--all of a sudden
My website is just an art diary website that usually has an initial 50 or so users after I post new work and send out an email--which happens between two and three times a year. In between postings, there are maybe a handful a month of users.
All of a sudden during the month of May I had 664 new users and 785 sessions from 99 different countries. I feel like this is due to some nefarious purpose--or some robotic testing going on of some kind.
I don't like the idea of my site becoming popular for the wrong reasons.
Has anyone had an experience like this?
Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much,
Hello,
Thank you for your question about a sudden increase in traffic to your site. A jump in traffic can happen from time to time and could be caused by many things such as robots or search engines crawling your site, but it could also be due to a topic that you cover growing in popularity, or even a keyword that is included on one of your pages have increased search volume. Due to this, there are several ways to investigate.
If you have them set up, I first recommend checking the Google search console to see if there is an increase in traffic due to a specific query. You can also review the traffic data in Google Analytics to see if it is a specific page that is getting the traffic or just the entire site overall. These tools will give you additional insight into the nature of the traffic.
If you suspect robots are causing the spike in traffic you have several options for limiting or blocking them. For more information see the following guide:
For advanced users that are comfortable using SSH, we also have a guide on how to Identify and block bad robots from website.
Websites that are built with WordPress can use plugins such as All in One SEO to block bad bots as well. Let us know if you have any further questions.
Thank you,
John-Paul