Unexplained spikes in Google Analytics

[ChristopherGlaeser]

My site has modest traffic (50 unique visitors per day).  In the past week, I've seen two unexplained spikes in my Google Analytics.  Yesterday, there were 140 unique visitors, and these unique visitors each visited one unique page.  This appears to be a bot of some sort.  If this is a bot, why does Google Analytics think these are unique visitors?  Is there a was for small sites to deal with this?

Best,
Christopher

[SlavaRybalka]

Grant me viewer's access, if you want, I will take a look. Here is my email: slavarybalko@gmail.com

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Christopher,

Take a look in GA and see if all of the visitors have the exact same version of java or flash and are coming from the same city. I've had this happen before, and on a site where I had a secondary tracking method where I could see it was just the same user.

One guess I had is that the user is in incognito mode in their browser, so you don't see a referring site and see it as a direct visit to a wide variety of internal pages.

[RobMay]

Many people experience the 'google Tease', where for days at a time, in blocks you will sometimes see these bumps in traffic. A recent article talking about this, I put in below.

I bet, more than likely  - this is the case.. but you could go back over trending data and look to see if it has happened before and if you see patterns in the these traffic increases

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-tease-14587.html

Cheers. Hope this helps a little.

Oh - I should also add that you should block any and all IP's in GA tracking that might screw the data (remove your IP, friends or office IP's, network IP's from people you know etc)... so clean the data up.. if you haven't already