I didn`t do anything, but my website visitors spiked!

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Michael Martinez: What are you using to count visitors?
  
  Do you have access to the server log files? If so, can you see how similar the IP addresses and user agents are?
  
  Did they all fetch the same URL(s)?
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  Mari Sa: I`m using Google Analytics. How can I view IP?
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  Michael Martinez: Mari Sa You cannot check IP addresses from Google Analytics.
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  Mari Sa: Michael Martinez How can I check them?
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  Michael Martinez: Mari Sa You must look in your hosting account`s server log files, if you have access to them.
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  Fabiola Diamond: Are you aware of any mention of your brand or biz on the web that could be sending all that traffic? is the traffic converting sales or have the traffic slowed down sales?
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  Mari Sa: Nope. The leads coming in are about the same.
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  Jayasanker Jayakrishnan: it could be spam traffic. reverse engineer through analytics. which page? which source? is KW available? etc...
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  Fabiola Diamond: Jayasanker Jayakrishnan I am always suspicious if I have a spike on traffic and a low conversion rate
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  Mari Sa: It`s the homepage getting the majority of hits and our bounce rate is 61%. :( The keyword getting the most hits is the company name.
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  Jayasanker Jayakrishnan: Mari Sa ok. you can try try segmenting the traffic based on various parameters at all pages>landing pages. you can also try checking on different dates and times. the point is to know if there`s some incongruity in traffic.
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  Victoria Gitelshtein: Direct trafic ....can be just bots. With 100% bounce rate...You supposed to filter view excluding bots....
  Nb. Traffic can be direct, from search, from social, from ofher reference sources, from campaigns. Direct traffic can be just mean its smone who typing your domain directly, or from "favorites", it can be you by youself while checking your articles live, or just Bots. Bots usually have 100% bounce rate. So advised to filter views on ga.
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  Mari Sa: I just selected exclude bots and my numbers have not appeared to changed. Is there a waiting period?
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  Victoria Gitelshtein: its like you`ve started now new view. all the past results will not change. Check what you see since now....
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  Mari Sa: Victoria Gitelshtein I just changed it a few minutes ago.
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  Victoria Gitelshtein: Mari Sa its ok. just let it go. and for the next days/weeks see if there is a change. you actually was supposed to have one standard view (as you had before) and make the new view without bots. this way you will be able to compare and see the differents with and without :)
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  Ammon Johns: `Direct` simply means that the tracker could not *detect* a referrer, and it can include links in emails, or links that go through certain redirects, etc. A huge spike in direct traffic can also happen if you get mentioned in print, have a TV or radio ad, etc.
  
  I`d suggest looking up some of the IPs to see if they are all coming from one specific region will help you narrow down the possibilities.