Where did 55 clicks come from?

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13
635 followers

Since I started my new posting schedule, my website has been scoring from 4 to 10 clicks every day. But something happened on Tuesday. There's this gigantic spike in the middle of my stats now!

So now I feel like I've messed up because I have no idea what happened. Today, in addition to a little translation work, I'm frantically trying to figure out how to connect MonsterInsights and Google Analytics. I hadn't already done it because I was setting up YouTube (11 subscribers today) and trying to figure out my website menus so that I can set up my bilingual plugin.

I guess it's a success. It certainly was a shock.

Anyway, before I watch Jay's video on the "Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics", I've got to subtitle tomorrow's video and write a compelling post for my website.:-)

That's all for today. Have a great week!

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Recent Comments

13

Personally I was happy about the upsurge... until I saw Partha's answer.
Thank you for helping to get the true information out!
Stephen

Hi Marsha,

There's a few things that come to mind.

As Diane has mentioned, if you're referring to the WA "Affiliate Revenue" stats on your homepage, pretty much everyone would have received a huge spike in clicks yesterday. Again, as Diane says, WA blog posts are indexed in bulk, so this will be a regular occurrence.

Secondly, your certainly don't need both MonsterInsights and Google Analytics.

In fact, MonsterInsights is almost "forced" upon anyone who has the All-in-One SEO plugin installed.

Google Analytics works perfectly well on its own, and MonsterInsights is notorious for slowing your website down.

A slower website can/will affect your rankings/traffic.

My advice, get rid of MonsterInsights.

Lastly, if ever you do get a huge (unexpected) spike in traffic to your website, typically confirmed by Google Analytics, you can check to see where this comes from.

Once inside Google Analytics you can see where indivudal visitors are coming from.

Scroll down to the block graph weekly summary and you'll see "Acquisition Report", click on this.

Then scroll down and you'll see "Acquisition".

Each section is marked as where visitors have originated from.

"Organic Search" "Social" "Direct" "Referral".

Then click on the blue bar next each individual source of traffic.

Unfortunately, when a website is in its infancy a huge spike in traffic is often not a good thing (that's not to say that it can't be a positive thing).

However, the vast majority of the time (for a new website) you'll see the source of the traffic has the words "Bot", "TrafficBot", etc.

This simply means that your site has been sent pretty much useless traffic, robots not humans.

The reason that certain companies do this is that they generally sell "fake" traffic.

Their aim is for someone to be impressed by receiving lots of traffic (even if it doesn't actually convert to sales), and then this person will purchase "fake" traffic.

The amount of traffic individual blog posts and a website receives can affect rankings.

The more traffic, the more popular Google and the other search engines deem a blog post to be, so the higher they will rank it.

This used to be a way of enhancing your authority online.

However, Google and the other search engines are far more sophisticated these days, and they know the difference between "real" and fake" traffic.

Hope that helps?

Partha

This is an AWESOME response, Partha! You have an amazing talent for putting everything in perspective and explaining it in great detail.

I've been reading a bunch of your blog posts lately and they are filled with very valuable information based on your extensive experience.

I want to personally THANK YOU for being so generous with your wisdom and knowledge!🙂

Thank you Partha,
This does help a great deal. I've read that many other people don't think that Monster Insights is a good thing. I haven't set up anything yet, fortunately, but I know I'll need to connect GA sooner or later.

I experienced the exact same thing yesterday. Thank you, Partha for the clarification!
Stephen

Denis,

That's really, really kind of you to say.

I feel very humbled, thank you.

Partha

Hey Marsha,

Yes, you'll find that anything that is "free" will always have an upgrade, or a paid option, e.g. plugins, themes, analytics, etc.

We have to remember that there is a business behind these, and obviously no business can make their living entirely from giving out everything for free.

So, if ever you see a plugin "advertising" something, be wary, and question whether you really need it, or if what you have will suffice.

And yes, tracking your traffic is a great idea, although how quickly you need to do this will depend on the age of your website.

The vast majority of websites will receive very little, if any, organic traffic for the first 3 months.

So, it may be a little soul-destroying to check in daily and see "zero" everytime, but this is the nature of the beast.

However, once you do have traffic, analytics are great. I specifically like to see which specific articles perform well, and then replicate the format around other keywords.

Partha

We were ALL famous for a day yesterday Stephen, LOL.

Partha

I call it as I see it 🙂

Hi - are you referring to the stats you see here at WA? They are not visitors to your website, but from people reading your contributions at WA, whether here on the platform or by finding it on Google. Mine shows a huge spike too.

The last time this happened, it was due to the fact that WA had a huge amount of their posts indexed in bulk.

That helps, Diane. It was the stats on the WA page. Honestly, I've never paid a lot of attention to it until now because the numbers were so low.

Hello Marsha, Jay has another one tomorrow night as well on using GA4. You don't need monster insights at all. Just GA and GSC, you'll be fine.

I'm signed up for that one, Joe. I'll probably catch the replay because it'll start at 2 am my time. Thanks!

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