Multiple visits to site from Singapore not Australia

[onyx_au]

Hello,

It's 11:30pm now in Sydney, Australia and I been with shopify for roughly 1 year. I only target Sydney Australia, all my ads are targeted here as well, everything is in Sydney Australia.

Today, my site, upon writing this, has 55 sessions from Singapore in the last maybe 4 hours and this NEVER happened before, no other country views my website constantly, I get the rare country a few times like USA, India etc...

I don't know what's triggering my website to show in Singapore?

Here's a snapshot of the analytics, as you can see there is a huge spike and this is all from Singapore.

Edit: nothing in GA either.

Also I noticed when I expand the analytics, it's all from mobile and the bounce rate is 100%

Must be spam from Singapore?

Upon writing this messsage at 12:45am Sydney time, another 15 page views from Singapore.

[LTd7]

Same here... analytics seem wonky. 43 visits overnight from Singapore. Also showing "live" visitors, but nothing on Realtime GA.

[onyx_au]

@LTd7Same, nothing in GA either.

Also I noticed when I expand the analytics, it's all from mobile and the bounce rate is 100%

Must be spam from Singapore?

[jordi-ordonez]

Have you already checked if those are bots or spam attemps?

[onyx_au]

@jordi-ordonez  I don't know how to do that, all I know is that Singapore is not showing in my google analytics and shopify's analytics is showing 100% bounce rate on mobile.

I am now at 29 visitors @ 1:20am Sydney time, all from Singapore.

[onyx_au]

@LTd7I Just googled it and spoke to chat.

The traffic from singapore is 'Bytespider' a web crawler bot, hence the spam on my website. I have spoken to shopify chat to try disallow Bytespider on my website in my robots.txt file

Since google analytics is NOT detecting singapore, GA doesn't recognise it as a real or bot from a computer. This Bytespider is crawling all my website's webpage 1 by 1.

[JordiOrdonez]

Yay! That makes sense 🙂

[LTd7]

Thanks for reporting back!

[Poppys-Crafts]

Hey there, I am also experiencing this today, is there anything we can do ourselves to stop it ? or do i need to contact Shopify support also? we have now had 113 visitors from Singapore today, nothing shows on GA only from Singapore only on Shopify.

Not sure if it is harmful in anyway ?

[Carmelo91]

Hi, I have the same issue. How should we fix this?

Thanks

[JJL]

Hello,
I'm experiencing the same thing. So far today I've had 90 visits from Singapore. It's not showing in Google Analytics. Sorry to be a bit slow, but I don't know what Bytespider is. Is it something I need to be worried about?

[JordiOrdonez]

Years ago we had this issue on Google Analytics, it was called ghost spam or fake referral spam.

Fake referrals showing up on the referrals report but generating 0 visits.

It was a way for spammers to generate direct links to their spammy pages on the reports and get visits because everyone was checkinf where the heck where those links coming from.

I remember one particular domain named semalt.com

Maybe it's a similar issue, but just for Shopify and with a different goal

[shebythesea]

I'm up to 101 Singapore visits today. Never had this before. At least we're not alone!

[onyx_au · Accepted solution]

TLDR: The solution is for the web crawler to just scan all your webpages. Mine has stopped on my end as I don't have that many pages. Mine stopped at around 127 Singapore views.

@JJLTechnically no but annoying, Bytespider is another 'bad' bot (you can google a list of bad bots that webcrawl websites, it's common), that's why it's not being detected through Google Analytics and Country Blocker shopify apps if you block singapore visitor traffic

In shopify go to:
Analytics > Reports > Sessions by location > on the right you'll see 3 column icon > check device browser

And you can see Singapore will have Bytespider or maybe another name for the web crawler in that column.

My visitors have stopped because I don't have that many pages on my site. The webcrawler will stop once it scans all your webpages on your site

Since google analytics is NOT detecting singapore, GA doesn't recognise it as a real or bot from a computer. This Bytespider is crawling all my website's webpage 1 by 1.

No visitor traffic blockers will stop it. I have used 'BM: Country blocker IP blocker' and it does work as I tested my own country, Australia, but because the webcrawler isn't coming from let's say a specific source like a human would, it's not being detected. If it's bypassing google analytics, it will bypass any traffic blocking apps.

The solution is for the web crawler to just scan all your webpages. Mine has stopped on my end as I don't have that many pages. Mine stopped at around 127 views.

[sabertooth]

We are also experiencing the same. As of this writing, we have 104 sessions from Singapore today. Not sure what we are to do. I am trying to connect with Shopify chat but haven't found it yet.

[JJL]

I've just spoken to Shopify through chat and they seem to think that it's nothing to worry about.

[fabulanebulae]

We're having this same issue with Bytespider. Can you give us more info on what you did to fix this? When I contacted Shopify Support, they just suggested using this app 🙄

Thanks!

[fabulanebulae]

Also, today we had only one order come in, which is a bit unusual. Not completely out of the question (we average around 6 orders per day), but strange. Do these bots affect sales too, for some complicated reason? (I don't know, maybe by affecting store speed or something.)

[onyx_au]

@fabulanebulaeI wouldn't get the app because visitor traffic blockers does not stop it. I have used 'BM: Country blocker IP blocker' and it does work as I tested my own country, Australia, but because the webcrawler isn't coming from let's say a specific source like a human would, it's not being detected. If it's bypassing google analytics, it will bypass any traffic blocking apps.

The solution is for the web crawler to just scan all your webpages. Mine has stopped on my end as I don't have that many pages.

[fabulanebulae]

Ok, I see. Also, does anyone have any idea why this crawler is going through our websites? Like what use is it to the company?

[onyx_au]

@fabulanebulae 

The 'bad' bots could have multiple reasons to scan multiple websites to gain data, we don't know their true intentions, but they could be:

- Stealing information such as website design, code, how the website built, customer information so they can spam them

Shopify apparently has great security and we shouldn't need to worry, there are literally 1000s of bad bots out there and it seems this bot either is new and it showed up in our visitor counter, other bad bots usually scan websites and it doesn't show up in our visitor counter, who knows, our sites could have been scanned by 10 other bad bots prior to this and we wouldn't know..... unless you're a person who knows what theyre searching for when looking at analytics or security of your website.

Furthermore, you can google a list of 'bad bots' and block them scanning your website and put them in your robots.txt but thing is, you will be doing this forever as there are existing bad bots and new bad bots being creating everyday.... so it's impossible to block them all. But if you manage to find some, no harm putting them in the block list.

[filthyotaku]

Thank you for your info, I also have the same issue and got in touch with Shopify support. I felt more confused by the end of the chat so this is helpful. 

[Dash1]

We are also having the same issue. 300 sessions from Singapore. 

[onyx_au]

@filthyotaku @Carmelo91 I updated the solution

@fabulanebulaeshouldn't affect your sales, my store got some sales through and looking at my shopify analytics, its average from the amount of local visitors if you exclude singapore visitors traffic.

[filthyotaku]

Thank you for providing such a clear and easy to understand solution.

I got my business partner (works in IT) to look over your solution and he is very much in agreement with you. We have over 600 individual product pages on our site so a long day for the bot ahead! 

[Arnya]

 Same here, should i worry about it?

[depeperwinkel]

Seeing the many views on this topic, I am convinced  this is a major nuisance. We have investigated all possibilities to block, but there is no way of preventing our content from being misused by these bots under the Shopify account. I believe Shopify herself should take effective measures on the server-side. Against Bytespider and similar abuse. It's excessive, never ending hundreds of visits on a stroke ! Urgent!