There's been a significant jump in traffic from citysearch.com and some of it does not look legitimate. For instance we'll see a group of hits in a row from the same IP address or a block of hits from different IP addresses within seconds of each other. The amount of traffic in December has almost doubled - in a month where typically traffic falls. The increase in traffic is not leading to additional sales or leads so I doubt it is actual web surfing people looking for the products and services on the web site to which they were referred by citysearch.com.
This jump in traffic comes shortly after blocking out other countries where we do not do business (RIPE, APNIC, AFRINIC). Multiple IPs hitting the site in succession seconds appart matches the M.O. of these particular hackers. Additionally we have been reporting on traffic from seemingly odd and bogus URLs and the traffic seems to have jumped. Not sure how related all this is.
Are hackers using the citysearch site and hacked computers to gain access to our sites, or is the citysearch traffic rigged somehow? Not sure but somethings smells hacky.