SOP #41 — Catching 31% Bot Traffic Before Closing

SOP #41 — Catching 31% Bot Traffic Before Closing

Content site listed at 40x monthly profit. Analytics looked clean. Here is the verification we ran:

1. Cross-check GA4 sessions vs server logs — pulled 90 days of raw access logs. Pass if variance under 10%. Result: logs showed 31% fewer human sessions than GA4 reported.
2. Segment traffic by ISP/ASN — filter datacenter ASNs (AWS, Hetzner, OVH). Pass if datacenter under 5%. Result: 31% from three datacenter ranges.
3. Check session duration distribution — flag spikes at exactly 0s or 1s. Result: 28% of sessions were sub-1-second.
4. Verify ad RPM against real human sessions — recompute. Result: real RPM was 44% lower than claimed.

Outcome: renegotiated from 40x to 22x on verified human revenue. Saved $61,000 on a $190k deal.

Save this — run it every deal.