Increase of a site's traffic is normally taken as a brand's visibility and relevance. But often things are not what they appear to be. Hence for making out whether the visitors are real or not data, leveraging is required. Establish What “Normal” Means for Your Business – The data and tracking should be made by such a source that in case of a drastic change the problem can be isolated and identified. In order to recognize what’s normal and what’s abnormal a baseline to work from has to be established. The performance data has to be reviewed consistently and methodically.
Not All Spikes Are Bad Spikes – Identifying whether abnormal spikes in the site traffic or analytics is good or bad is difficult. Logistics issues can be alerted by sudden spikes and dips.
Common Sense and Logic – Looking for twists and reviewing behavioural flows to identify pattern of users can be employed. This helps in understanding the key attributes of the traffic or the keywords. The emerging patterns can be used for proper optimization of the flow of the site.
Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/analytics/ask-your-data-is-it-a-bot-or-real-traffic/