

Ask HN: Rule of thumb for identfying fake web traffic - einehexe

We suspect that our marketing firm is generating fake web traffic. This is mostly a gut feeling from watching past traffic but we need proof. Our privacy page is suddenly very popular and people hang out on the video page without watching any videos. Is there a good way to tell if it is a bot from the server logs? Any input would be appreciated.
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raquo
Try a honeypot maybe - create an invisible link and see if it gets visited. If
their bots are dumb enough to visit the privacy page then they may fall for
this too.

In general looking into anomalies in GA is a good bet - find differences in
not-so-important metrics like browser shares, countries, network names, screen
sizes, time-of-day, etc. you should find enough data to at least convince
yourself. It's hard to fake everything properly.

Try actually looking at server access logs and see if you notice any patterns
- UAs (phantomjs?), IPs, ...

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einehexe
Thank you raquo that worked like a charm. We now have them dead to rights. I
will do a write up for HN at some point when everything is resolved. Simple
and effective solution, thanks again.

~~~
raquo
Heh, awesome that it actually worked!

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andrewhillman
Your gut is probably correct. Sounds like PPV Networks.

Resources:

[http://www.doubleverify.com/](http://www.doubleverify.com/)

[http://www.mdotlabs.com/](http://www.mdotlabs.com/)

[http://www.spider.io/](http://www.spider.io/)

[http://integralads.com/](http://integralads.com/)

Good luck and report back. Expose them right here on HN.

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gesman
\- Check user agent of each visit.

\- Check IP address/Geo location of visitors. If suddenly India or Pakistan
developed an unhealthy interest in your site pages - you'll know that it's all
a bogus.

\- Check Referrer of each visitor. This could hint you either where visitors
are coming from or that these are bots - if suddenly no visitors have any
referrers

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jjoe
You could try interacting with these visitors with a live chat tool. Real
users will either minimize / close the window or interact with you. Bots will
likely do neither.

