Anyone experiencing the same? I noticed a huge Google search bump in Matomo since July 25, 2026, but it looks like scraper bot visits, not human visitors.
After checking, it seems like the extra visits are all single page visits to various pages, with Google search as the source, with a Linux & Chrome setup, from diferent US IPs.
I wonder if this could be a new Google spider that Matomo doesn’t recognize?
Although my guess is a third-party scraper rather, that’s using Google search results as the source for some reason.
Yes, I’ve noticed similar patterns with sudden spikes in Google-referred traffic.The fact that most visits are single-page sessions from different US IPs and Linux/Chrome user agents makes it look more like automated or scraper traffic than genuine users. I’d check the user-agent strings, request frequency, and server logs to see whether the behavior matches a known Googlebot. It could also be a third-party scraper using Google search results as the referral source rather than an actual Google crawler.
I’ve noticed something similar recently. Before assuming it’s genuine Google Search traffic, I’d compare the user agents, IP ranges, session duration, and engagement metrics. If most visits are single-page sessions with almost no interaction, it does sound more like unrecognized bots or scrapers than real users. It will be interesting to see whether this is a temporary pattern or something Matomo can identify automatically in a future update.
That is not a part of Matomo, because its required individuall solutions. Not everey Matomo User will block this bad bots, because there is no solution to block 100 % bad bots and 0 % humans.The default must also be setted at: block 0 % humans. But the consequence of this is, that bad bots are not blocked.
The Bad Bots are also crawler. Most of this crawling content for AI LLM.
That’s the right behavior. Create your individuall Bad Bot blocker with this informations.
The peoples with insight in this Bad Bot behavior don’t only block the tracking, but block the traffic of the bad bots.
The problem with these: they are very difficult to block. I have been monitoring this problem over 3 months. Initially, most of these malicious bots with identical settings (Linux & Chrome setup, screen res: 1920x1080) came from data centers. Blocking IP ranges fixed the issue for a while. But lately, I notice they use distributed IPs from telephony networks, without identifiable IP patterns to block.
What Matomo can do at least, is to add the ability of mass deletion by IP.
Now, one can use GDPR privacy (delete them one by one) or edit the database directly.
Yes, I have noticed similar reports, and the pattern you are describing definitely sounds more like automated traffic than genuine search users. The combination of one-page visits, 0-second sessions, Linux/Chrome, multiple US IPs and Google Search as the referrer is especially suspicious. There is actually a Matomo forum thread from July 26 describing almost the exact same pattern.
I would be cautious about calling it a new Google spider, though. Genuine Google crawlers can be verified through their IP address and reverse DNS legitimate Googlebot traffic should resolve to Google-controlled domains such as googlebot.com or google.com.
My guess would also be a scraper or automated browser trying to look like normal Google traffic. Checking the server logs and reverse-DNS results for a sample of those IPs should give a much clearer answer.