---

System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4827670.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 5:19 am on Jan 1, 2017 (PDT -8)

---

Many of you are familiar with my struggles with Google and our 12 year old site.

After a check of my GA, and noticed tons of referral spam from twitter, reddit, lifehacker etc, I was concerned. Some people told me not to worry about referral spam it doesn't hurt your site.

Well WHERE THERE IS SMOKE THERE IS FIRE!

Couldn't help think about zombie traffic, referral spam, and the current update.

I checked "under the hood" some more and discovered gazillions, yes gazillions of Brute Force Attacks on my wp-login page (we are a wordpress site). This does affect bounce rate, drains servers and who knows what else. It's not good. The December update had to be responding to the Brute Force attacks. Perhaps sites that are being flooded with this type of attack are not welcome very well by the Dec update?

So I installed Wordfence, paid $99 for the year to block countries (sorry this is not meant to be an ad). I blocked the Sh*t out them too, boy did I ever! No Russia, No Ukraine etc.

I redirected the login page too.

Well, I made a few sales last half of December. I really thought I was gonna be at zero when the month started,

So I would recommend to everyone to tighten there firewall. Russia is indeed hacking USA sites. Brute Force Login attempts are through the roof for December. I reckon Google doesn't like it.

Thoughts?

And hope that helps someone....

Happy New Year.

Turns