Creating an effective website is a lot of hard work. And it is even harder to keep a website up and running.

But from the past few days, many website owners (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) are reporting a high volume of spam traffic from the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and Seychelles.

There is no way of telling why it is originating from these locations.

bot-traffic-from-czechia-and-seychelles
Source

A huge number of site owners have received a large amount of bot traffic from Czechia and Seychelles in recent weeks. Does this have anything to do with the HCU? Is it Google somehow analyzing the site? Because many have actively blocked this traffic\
Source

Hello guys, recently I have been receiving lots of organic traffic from Seychelles and Czechia, my website typically never get visitors from these two countries, anyone else having the same issue?
Source

A quick Google search reveals that it is ‘organic’ traffic from Seychelles and Czechia. But in fact, this is all just bot spam under the garb of organic traffic.

So, the issue becomes quite confusing in the case of those websites who typically never get visitors from these two countries.

According to some reports, spike in bot traffic from Seychelles and Czechia has also altered the RPM calculation thus affecting the ads health.

bot-traffic-from-seychelles-and-czechia
Source

However, on a brighter side, there are some workarounds that can help solve the issue. One such workaround includes following some simple steps in Cloudflare as suggested by an affected party.

  • Go to Security > WAF
  • Name rule
  • Country = Czech Republic OR Seychelles
  • Managed Challenge
  • Deploy

Another individual on Reddit suggests adding a filter to Google Analytics to exclude traffic from Seychelles and Czech Republic.

Add a filter to Google Analytics to exclude traffic from Seychelles and Czech Republic.
It might still hit your server or Cloudflare, but at least it won’t bother you (or your RPM calculation)
Source

Finally, webmasters can also implement a ReCAPTCHA filter on all traffic from Seychelles and Czechia in order to block bot spam.

Bot-traffic-workaround
Source

This can help webmasters in a way that real people will have to complete the reCAPTCHAs before accessing the site. Bots will automatically not be able to make it past the CAPTCHAs.

If affected, you can try these workarounds and see if any fixes the issue. We’ll keep tabs on further developments and update the article.

Featured image source: Google

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Riya Madaan
868 Posts

Weaving a little bit of life into the articles I write. No, not really! That's not really possible for a trash writer like me but I still try. Apart from it, I skate, meditate and medicate. Also keep myself away from troubles as I age.

Next article View Article

Google Drive not letting users play videos, throws 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error

Google Drive users have been dealing with an issue for years where they get an 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error when trying to play videos. And Google has still...
Feb 20, 2024 2 Min Read