I had a hit!
But I didn’t.
Or, maybe I did. Let me explain...
A blog I own had a spike in traffic. It happened the day I launched a new post.
Here’s how the stats looked in Google Analytics:
- Saturday – 11 active users
- Sunday – 561 active users
- Monday – 12 active users
These numbers are an under-count, as usual. That’s because some users don’t agree to the use of cookies, and so don’t get counted.
Still, jumping from 11 daily active users to 561 daily active users is good, right? I launched a new page, promoted it on X and the traffic rolled in. What’s not to like?
Sadly, some things don’t add up here.
Firstly, my social media stats were weaker than for previous posts. The post on X had 60 click-throughs by the end of Saturday. The post on Threads, my backup promotion channel, drew a paltry 3 click-throughs. I’m experienced enough to know it’s mostly your promotion than brings you traffic. If my promotion wasn't performing, why was there a spike in traffic?
Sometimes people share your material somewhere hidden from you: a private Facebook group, an email list, a Telegram channel. Perhaps that happened in this case.
But there are other factors that raise suspicions.
If I focus on the day of the spike and look at the engagement stats, I notice that these 600 users racked up 19,000 page views! That’s wild. A quick calculation shows that would be 34 pageviews per active user. It’s just about possible if every visitor read every single page on that blog. But who does that?
Moreover, when I look at the Pages and Screens Report things get wilder still. According to Google Analytics, these 19,000 views occurred on the home page. So now, you’re asking me to believe that each visitor sat there and refreshed the page 34 times. What's more, my promotion on X (and Threads) didn’t link to the home page, it went straight to the new page.
The traffic was spread evenly across numerous countries, which adds credibility to it. Also, the reading times for these ‘users’ were high: 9m 57s was the average engagement time per active user.
But the technology stats are off. I looked at Active Users by Operating System, found under Reports -> User -> Tech -> Overview. And, on the day of the spike I found the following:
- Windows: 560
- Chrome OS: 558
- Linux: 557
- Macintosh: 557
- Android: 1
If we add up these numbers, we get 2,233 users. That’s rather different from the 560 users recorded elsewhere in Google Analytics.
I find the even split deeply suspicious. For a website aimed at a general audience (as opposed to one aimed at Mac users), I’d expect Windows to be way out in the lead, and Linux behind the others.
I’m calling it. This is a fake event.
I wonder what the point is. Unlike other Google Analytics spam I’ve seen before, there’s no referring website being promoted. Maybe it’s a spam bot that’s malfunctioned, or has been partially blocked by Google.