Google Analytics Spike in Direct Traffic? Anomaly Detection

In Google Analytics, if you see a sudden spike in traffic or revenue, Anomaly Detection may catch that.
SIA Team
December 1, 2021

Is Google Analytics showing a spike in direct traffic? 

Well, I just wrote an article that features John Mueller’s response to a similar situation. The article’s titled, “In Google Analytics, We Get Direct Traffic Spikes. Why?” 

In this article, I’ll speak to the same situation, but talk about a feature called Anomaly Detection in Google Analytics

Anomaly detection, from my understanding, has to do with detecting that a certain data point, within a certain time frame, has a figure (or number) that’s much higher (or lower), than that data point has across other time periods.

In the article I referenced above, Google’s John Muller suggested that one potential contributor to an abnormal spike in traffic can be Google Discover.

Perhaps another contributor to an abnormal level of traffic would be a technical issue, like a page not working. 

Has anything recently changed on your site that might be a factor in abnormalities? 

Oh…of course, bot traffic–that is, traffic that might not be from humans, but rather, from a software program or malicious bots. Maybe it could be part of a DDOS attack, which is when an overwhelming amount of traffic is sent to a site or server, so much so that the server’s processing capability is severely taxed. 

So, if Google Analytics shows you a spike in direct traffic, it may be due to a number of reasons, not limited to Google Discover or bot traffic. 

Source: Google Analytics Twitter channel