I’ve seen bot traffic on sites I manage for years now. Even wrote an article about it on one of the big SEO sites a few years back. But now it’s gotten so bad that people are talking about “Zombie Traffic from Google”
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4773145.htm
The conspiracy theorists think the bots are coming from Google and they’re timed with Google’s requests for them to do AdWords spends. Personally I think it’s just an old problem getting so bad that 1) it’s noticeable, and 2) Google can’t manage to suppress it.
Basically, people with e-commerce sites are noticing that their Google traffic is consistent but there are days when they make tons of sales and other days when they make no sales. The bounce rates on the two types of days differ greatly which indicates that it’s bot traffic, not real humans.
IMHO, what’s happening is that Google is trying to “personalize” their results and can’t figure out that the user is a bot. But they notice a pattern of usage and then think a particular site would be perfect for users with that pattern of usage. So, they manage to send nothing but bots to the site. Some site owners are trying to make their sites look sales-oriented and commerce related rather than informational thinking that Google will then send commerce-oriented users their way, rather than people who are looking for information.
It used to be that Google traffic was great traffic. Now it depends on what type of Google traffic you get. God forbid they think you’re the perfect site for bots!
