Traffic spikes from channel "Typed/Bookmarked"

[AZ20]

Traffic has been an abnormal increase in traffic to our website. When checked, the traffic spike was contributed by channel “Type/Bookmarked”. Understand that traffic data that groups under "Typed/Bookmarked" channel means the following:

                * If a hit does not have any referrer data

                * If users type our URL directly into their browser

                * If users bookmarks our page references it on later

However, for the page that've seen the spike shouldn’t exhibit above user behavior as (1) the link URL is extremely long and (2) it’s not a page where users will typically go directly to without entering our homepage first. Hence, would like to check if there is any malfunction with traffic data or any other possible reasons why this is happening.

[yuhuisg]

An abnormal spike coupled with Typed/Bookmarked referrals (i.e. direct traffic) sounds suspiciously like bot traffic. If these are bots, then they wouldn't normally save any cookies, let alone Adobe's visitor ID cookie. As a result, every hit is essentially a "new" visit. And since bots also normally don't send any document.referrer data, AA would then classify them as Typed/Bookmarked referrals.