I previously wrote about bot traffic leaving referral signatures on websites — a phenomenon that became widespread. Moz.com subsequently offered guidance on filtering such data from Google Analytics. Traffic spiked initially but normalised over time.
Interestingly, approximately 5% of ongoing traffic to that earlier post originates from Samara Oblast, Russia.
What is Samara Oblast?
Samara is a city in Russia, technically an administrative division called an Oblast. Samara sends as much traffic to my website as the city of Mumbai, from which I come.
The Mumbai traffic is explainable through office colleagues, social referrals, and people who know me. The Samara traffic is not. Even accounting for DOTA2 content that might appeal to Russian visitors, the volume seems anomalous.
Geographic Trolling?
My theory is coordinated bot activity — an agency conducting “geographic trolling” across the internet. Rather than genuine Russian users, this appears to be automated traffic designed to confuse analytics and potentially identify insecure websites.
Recommendation: filter this traffic in Google Analytics. The more unsettling possibility is that bots identifying insecure websites might trigger more malicious follow-up activity. The Samara Oblast bots could be scouts.