Referral traffic returned to "normal" levels on 24 Sep 2010. Did you investigate and find anything? Did you do something to stop the referral traffic? If so, what did you do? Thank you.
W. Keith Watkins Omniture Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc. 919-301-3275 kwatkins@redhat.com
On 09/23/2010 02:15 PM, Keith Watkins wrote:
Starting on 1 Sep 2010 there was a significant increase in the traffic coming from http://fedoraproject.org to http://www.redhat.com and the traffic remains elevated (see data below, although the data is for the domain-level not the page-level). Further, this traffic is producing click-throughs to a few specific links on the redhat.com homepage. One last data point, there does not appear to be a pattern to the IP addresses behind this traffic (The IPs are fairly evenly distributed across several subnets).
My questions:
- Have you seen an increase in your overall site traffic corresponding to our increase in referrals?
- Have you seen a similar increase in exits from your site to our site?
- Does your site have any new links to our site that went live on 1 Sep 2010?
- Do you know of any reason we would see an increase in referral traffic from your site?
- Is this legitimate referral traffic or is something else going on?
Thank you and please contact me with additional questions.
Instances of fedoraproject.org being a referring domain to the redhat.com domain
Date fedoraproject.org 08/22/10 129 08/23/10 188 08/24/10 147 08/25/10 230 08/26/10 200 08/27/10 207 08/28/10 125 08/29/10 141 08/30/10 201 08/31/10 181 09/01/10 7,133 09/02/10 14,303 09/03/10 12,878 09/04/10 11,663 09/05/10 12,894 09/06/10 13,973 09/07/10 13,318 09/08/10 8,755 09/09/10 7,142 09/10/10 8,777 09/11/10 10,927 09/12/10 9,985 09/13/10 10,004 09/14/10 9,283 09/15/10 9,675 09/16/10 11,044 09/17/10 9,097 09/18/10 8,889 09/19/10 10,862 09/20/10 9,017 09/21/10 8,116 09/22/10 7,422
-- W. Keith Watkins Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc.
My *guess* is that a search engine crawler is causing this, as some pages running on the phx2 boxes have a clickable Red Hat logo, and crawlers would easily be able to follow that link.
Also, why is this such an issue? I see no reason why it'd be a problem. I would greatly appreciate if you explained why it's so concerning.
Darren VanBuren ============== http://theoks.net/
Sent from my iPod
On Sep 28, 2010, at 8:08, Keith Watkins kwatkins@redhat.com wrote:
Referral traffic returned to "normal" levels on 24 Sep 2010. Did you investigate and find anything? Did you do something to stop the referral traffic? If so, what did you do? Thank you.
W. Keith Watkins Omniture Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc. 919-301-3275 kwatkins@redhat.com
On 09/23/2010 02:15 PM, Keith Watkins wrote:
Starting on 1 Sep 2010 there was a significant increase in the traffic coming from http://fedoraproject.org to http://www.redhat.com and the traffic remains elevated (see data below, although the data is for the domain-level not the page-level). Further, this traffic is producing click-throughs to a few specific links on the redhat.com homepage. One last data point, there does not appear to be a pattern to the IP addresses behind this traffic (The IPs are fairly evenly distributed across several subnets).
My questions: Have you seen an increase in your overall site traffic corresponding to our increase in referrals? Have you seen a similar increase in exits from your site to our site? Does your site have any new links to our site that went live on 1 Sep 2010? Do you know of any reason we would see an increase in referral traffic from your site? Is this legitimate referral traffic or is something else going on?
Thank you and please contact me with additional questions.
Instances of fedoraproject.org being a referring domain to the redhat.com domain
Date fedoraproject.org 08/22/10 129 08/23/10 188 08/24/10 147 08/25/10 230 08/26/10 200 08/27/10 207 08/28/10 125 08/29/10 141 08/30/10 201 08/31/10 181 09/01/10 7,133 09/02/10 14,303 09/03/10 12,878 09/04/10 11,663 09/05/10 12,894 09/06/10 13,973 09/07/10 13,318 09/08/10 8,755 09/09/10 7,142 09/10/10 8,777 09/11/10 10,927 09/12/10 9,985 09/13/10 10,004 09/14/10 9,283 09/15/10 9,675 09/16/10 11,044 09/17/10 9,097 09/18/10 8,889 09/19/10 10,862 09/20/10 9,017 09/21/10 8,116 09/22/10 7,422
-- W. Keith Watkins Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc.
-- websites mailing list websites@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/websites
On Sat, Oct 02, 2010 at 07:37:13PM -0700, Darren VanBuren wrote:
On Sep 28, 2010, at 8:08, Keith Watkins kwatkins@redhat.com wrote:
Referral traffic returned to "normal" levels on 24 Sep 2010. Did you investigate and find anything? Did you do something to stop the referral traffic? If so, what did you do? Thank you.
My *guess* is that a search engine crawler is causing this, as some pages running on the phx2 boxes have a clickable Red Hat logo, and crawlers would easily be able to follow that link.
Also, why is this such an issue? I see no reason why it'd be a problem. I would greatly appreciate if you explained why it's so concerning.
After some conversation with Keith, I think the issue was that it was such a difference that it naturally attracted his attention looking at the resulting graphs. If Fedora caused such a jump in eyeballs on Red Hat's site, naturally Red Hat as our sponsor would be interested in what caused it, whether it's desirable, or could be replicated. Not in terms of finger-pointing, but rather, "Wow, that's really interesting, what led to so much increased interest in our site from people visiting a Fedora site?"
I talked to Keith about the information he might want to procure from the Red Hat IT folks to see where the referrals actually came from. The ball's in Red Hat's court to pursue as they wish now since their own logs are going to give them the most valuable information.
Okay, thanks for explaining things, Paul.
Darren VanBuren ============== http://theoks.net/
Sent from my iPod
On Oct 4, 2010, at 7:55, "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Oct 02, 2010 at 07:37:13PM -0700, Darren VanBuren wrote:
On Sep 28, 2010, at 8:08, Keith Watkins kwatkins@redhat.com wrote:
Referral traffic returned to "normal" levels on 24 Sep 2010. Did you investigate and find anything? Did you do something to stop the referral traffic? If so, what did you do? Thank you.
My *guess* is that a search engine crawler is causing this, as some pages running on the phx2 boxes have a clickable Red Hat logo, and crawlers would easily be able to follow that link.
Also, why is this such an issue? I see no reason why it'd be a problem. I would greatly appreciate if you explained why it's so concerning.
After some conversation with Keith, I think the issue was that it was such a difference that it naturally attracted his attention looking at the resulting graphs. If Fedora caused such a jump in eyeballs on Red Hat's site, naturally Red Hat as our sponsor would be interested in what caused it, whether it's desirable, or could be replicated. Not in terms of finger-pointing, but rather, "Wow, that's really interesting, what led to so much increased interest in our site from people visiting a Fedora site?"
I talked to Keith about the information he might want to procure from the Red Hat IT folks to see where the referrals actually came from. The ball's in Red Hat's court to pursue as they wish now since their own logs are going to give them the most valuable information.
-- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com -- websites mailing list websites@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/websites
Tools like Omniture account for and filter out most search engine crawlers so that is most likely not the issue.
The issue is mainly from a marketing perspective and, despite arguments to the contrary, websites are primarily marketing collateral. Changes like these are noticed. The problem is that going from 200 views/day to 10k+ views/day is not "natural" and raises flags. The obvious questions need to be asked -- why did traffic increase radically, is this "bad" traffic (some kind of attack, phishing, etrc.)), what is causing this traffic, etc. From a marketing metrics standpoint, a by-product of this traffic is that the homepage metrics get skewed and the additional click-throughs to the promotion spots make measuring marketing effectiveness difficult.
Disclaimer -- these opinions are my own and do not represent anything other than that.
W. Keith Watkins Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc.
On 10/02/2010 10:37 PM, Darren VanBuren wrote:
My *guess* is that a search engine crawler is causing this, as some pages running on the phx2 boxes have a clickable Red Hat logo, and crawlers would easily be able to follow that link.
Also, why is this such an issue? I see no reason why it'd be a problem. I would greatly appreciate if you explained why it's so concerning.
Darren VanBuren
Sent from my iPod
On Sep 28, 2010, at 8:08, Keith Watkins <kwatkins@redhat.com mailto:kwatkins@redhat.com> wrote:
Referral traffic returned to "normal" levels on 24 Sep 2010. Did you investigate and find anything? Did you do something to stop the referral traffic? If so, what did you do? Thank you.
W. Keith Watkins Omniture Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc. 919-301-3275 kwatkins@redhat.com mailto:kwatkins@redhat.com
On 09/23/2010 02:15 PM, Keith Watkins wrote:
Starting on 1 Sep 2010 there was a significant increase in the traffic coming from http://fedoraproject.org to http://www.redhat.com and the traffic remains elevated (see data below, although the data is for the domain-level not the page-level). Further, this traffic is producing click-throughs to a few specific links on the redhat.com http://redhat.com homepage. One last data point, there does not appear to be a pattern to the IP addresses behind this traffic (The IPs are fairly evenly distributed across several subnets).
My questions:
- Have you seen an increase in your overall site traffic corresponding to our increase in referrals?
- Have you seen a similar increase in exits from your site to our site?
- Does your site have any new links to our site that went live on 1 Sep 2010?
- Do you know of any reason we would see an increase in referral traffic from your site?
- Is this legitimate referral traffic or is something else going on?
Thank you and please contact me with additional questions.
Instances of fedoraproject.org http://fedoraproject.org being a referring domain to the redhat.com http://redhat.com domain
Date fedoraproject.org http://fedoraproject.org 08/22/10 129 08/23/10 188 08/24/10 147 08/25/10 230 08/26/10 200 08/27/10 207 08/28/10 125 08/29/10 141 08/30/10 201 08/31/10 181 09/01/10 7,133 09/02/10 14,303 09/03/10 12,878 09/04/10 11,663 09/05/10 12,894 09/06/10 13,973 09/07/10 13,318 09/08/10 8,755 09/09/10 7,142 09/10/10 8,777 09/11/10 10,927 09/12/10 9,985 09/13/10 10,004 09/14/10 9,283 09/15/10 9,675 09/16/10 11,044 09/17/10 9,097 09/18/10 8,889 09/19/10 10,862 09/20/10 9,017 09/21/10 8,116 09/22/10 7,422
-- W. Keith Watkins Business Analyst Red Hat, Inc.
-- websites mailing list websites@lists.fedoraproject.org mailto:websites@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/websites
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Keith Watkins kwatkins@redhat.com wrote:
Tools like Omniture account for and filter out most search engine crawlers so that is most likely not the issue.
Having worked at Omniture (now part of Adobe) in a previous life, I can
vouch for this.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough information to be able to make an educated guess as to why we're seeing an increase in referrals from fedoraproject.org to redhat.com. As Paul said, the http logs from Red Hat IT are probably going to be the most valuable in helping us find out several key pieces of information: 1) Which page(s) on www.fedoraproject.org are referring people to redhat.com, and 2) Are there any similarities re: User Agent on those redirects and 3) are all the redirects going to the same page on www.redhat.com and 4) Is there any variability in IP addresses? Times of day?
While Omniture's SiteCatalyst should be able to give you some of this information, I'd love to see someone grab the HTTP logs from the server and do some more focuses analysis.
-- Jared Smith Fedora Project Leader
websites@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Darren VanBuren -
Jared K. Smith -
Keith Watkins -
Paul W. Frields