Bandwidth problem... huge number of extra visitors... no extra business

[mac-man]

Our Analytics show a steady increase in traffic up to our busy Xmas period - as per previous years.

However there is a HUGE spike in visits and bandwidth over a period of 5 days in November. This is not related to any external advertising or email campaigns or anything else like that.

It's completely off trend for this year and last year.

I want to try and get to the bottom of this... I have analytics and the stats on Plesk to have a look at... but am not sure what I should be looking for. Any suggestions welcome as to how to get to the bottom of this... as it's costing money!!

[Duncan Rounding]

Do you have Google Analytics? That will show you the traffic sources and referrers which would help.

[fergusw]

Chris,
Try checking the visitors (source of traffic) for this month in your Plesk stats. There may be a particular traffic source that has exceptionally high values and may be the culprit e.g. some form of attack or perhaps the search engine robots were excessively spidering the website?

[chris ashdown]

Sometimes it's just out of your control, a while back there was a popular film with a nurse dressed in lilac uniform, ever since then we have had extra sales of these for party wear by both sexes, come next haloween then guess more again

May just be something read in a mag or seen on tv which got them looking while they remembered

[mac-man]

Thanks guys.

Will plod through them to see what I can pick up.