Massive random upsurge in Forum Requests and Page Views

[rav4club]

Forum URL: forum.rav4driversclub.com

Despite having the no-advert upgrade on my forum, I noticed proboards adverts being served on the forum.

On checking the Analytics, looks like there has been a glitch somewhere on the system?    My usual page view count is around the 35-45K mark a month, but suddenly for 3 days I had hundreds of thousands of views PER DAY!

It would be lovely to think my forum has suddenly taken off like a rocket, but the number of posts and threads on those days don't tally with that view count

Any ideas what has happened here?  I need my Ad-free viewing back but it is not possible with these random page views happening.

Could it be comfirmed that whatever issue that caused this is fixed and won't reoccur? 

Also could I have my Ad-free sub refreshed for April as it should not have been used up by the 12th  (and has always lasted the full month - see below)

Thanks

[Michael]

Hi,

Well first off I can confirm the analytics. You did receive that many pageviews in that period! This isn't a bug but more likely it was a DDOS (a type of coordinated attack) or a broken search bot that got caught in a loop (most likely not malicious). I don't have any info for you at this time but I'll dig deeper into the analytics and see what I can find.

I can't promise that this won't happen again as this is just something that can occur on the internet. I can however give you another 50,000 pageview pack to make up for the "wasted" pageviews.

You may want to consider disabling ad-free for guests if you haven't already, as that could help in the future.

[rav4club]

Apr 11, 2019 15:30:42 GMT -8 Michael said:

Hi,

Well first off I can confirm the analytics. You did receive that many pageviews in that period! This isn't a bug but more likely it was a DDOS (a type of coordinated attack) or a broken search bot that got caught in a loop (most likely not malicious). I don't have any info for you at this time but I'll dig deeper into the analytics and see what I can find.

I can't promise that this won't happen again as this is just something that can occur on the internet. I can however give you another 50,000 pageview pack to make up for the "wasted" pageviews.

You may want to consider disabling ad-free for guests if you haven't already, as that could help in the future.

I'll keep an eye on this.  My normal page views are such that the 50k view pack is enough for all, but I will bear this in mind. I guess these 700,000 odd spurious views would have been flagged as "guest" views as well, so if I disabled ad-free for guests they wouldn't have rundown my 50k ad-free allowance for members?

And a big thanks for adding on a 50k pageview pack so quickly to get my forum looking 'normal' again!  much appreciated.  I was wary of just buying a new pack in case in just got swallowed up in a few hours.

Cheers,

[Former Member]

so if I disabled ad-free for guests they wouldn't have rundown my 50k ad-free allowance for members?

Correct. Ads will still show for guests and will not count towards your ad-free page views.

[VanWoman84]

Can I just add that I noticed this back in January, only I don't have ad free so it didn't matter to me. My spike was only 9000 in one day, up from a few hundred.

[Michael]

Apr 14, 2019 5:57:07 GMT -8 VanWoman84 said:

Can I just add that I noticed this back in January, only I don't have ad free so it didn't matter to me. My spike was only 9000 in one day, up from a few hundred.

This is almost certainly normal bot traffic and not even remotely close to the (still small by most standards) traffic posted about in this thread.