Is this bot traffic and if yes what actions can be done?

[michaela7702973]

I'm looking closely at our website traffic patterns and noticed something strange. Yesterday, June 14, 2022, I broke down Pageviews/Visits/Unique Visitors and Bounces by Hour of Day. At 3:00 AM there was a big spike in traffic. Broken down further by Browser, IP Address and Region, I found that the traffic spike was from a single Browser - Google Chrome 91.0, a single IP address (in screenshot below), and Region - Oregon. The Bounces coming from this device is extremely high,  bounce rate in the high 90s.

I checked traffic for a different day I picked randomly - June 1, 2022. Once again there's a spike in traffic at 3 AM from the same Browser and IP Address.

We aren't in retail and don't operate an online store. We operate in the Eastern Time Zone within regular business hours, 9 am - 5 pm. There is no reason for anyone to use the site at 3 AM as opposed to regular business hours or perhaps earlier and later like in the evening but using the site at 3 AM is unexpected and strange to say the least. Whatever visitors need to use, access, download from our site are available any time.

I suspect this is bot traffic. Please kindly take a look and let me know your opinion. If it appears to be bot traffic, what can be done about it? I realize I can create a segment to exclude this traffic from reports but is that the only thing that can be done?

[Pablo_Childe]

Check with your marketing teams have they recently purchased any SEM/keyword or digital banner traffic?

BOT like traffic could be when such traffic is bought from 3rd party suppliers...

[leocwlau]

There is also another possible source of bot traffic that your IT team is doing regular pentest to your website.

[michaela7702973 · Accepted solution]

The traffic was from a company that we've engaged for regulatory archiving purposes, unbeknownst to me. I added the IP Address to the Exclude By IP Address (Analytics > Admin > All admin > Exclude by IP) to prevent it from skewing our analytics data.