Strange Traffic to Theme Files

[kerri]

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a fair amount of traffic to two very specific files. One from X Theme itself, another from Cornerstone. I’ve never had traffic to individual files ever before, aside from any intended documents or photos. So clearly something is off.

I’m not sure if this is something anyone here can explain, but I’m curious as to what’s going on. Time on page is almost non-existent, so it’s bringing my overall average down. I know this isn’t a huge concern short term. I’m mostly concerned at the how and why.

[tristup]

Hi @kerridawn,

These are Source Maps files. The source maps files are there for debugging and might help us when providing support. It appears in some analytics because of crawlers or bots visiting your site.
Therefore, you should ignore or exclude such traffic sources when viewing your analytics data

Thanks

[kerri]

I’ve been using X and Cornerstone for almost three years on this website, and never until now have I ever had this happen. Not with any other plugins or related files either, this is not normal.

Even if it isn’t something malicious, it can still cause negative SEO-related effects by affecting bounce rate and time on page.

If this was something I’ve encountered in the past I wouldn’t care so much, but this came out of nowhere and at a pretty significant rate – and only with X theme and Cornerstone…

[christian]

Hey @kerridawn,

Thank you for your feedback.

Rest assured though that those will not cause negative SEO issues because if they are, none of the sites using X theme will appear on SERPS.

I understand though that this will be annoying when viewed on the analytics software and might give you false information that is why I’ll post this in our issue tracker so our development team would be made aware of this case.

Please stay tuned for product updates.

Thanks.