Do NOT Believe Google Analytics
Don't Believe Google Analytics? What??
Okay you probably think I'm crazy, but I promise you I'm not!
Google Analytics is in fact an amazing free web analytical tool, however if not utilized properly, you're going to confuse yourself more than help. So why do I say, don't believe Google Analytics? Keep reading.
Over 5,000 Page Views!
I made my website at the start of March, and since I was in college at the time, I wasn't able to put in as much time as I would've liked. It was about mid summer (2015) where I was able to really start putting in full time work again on my site. That's when I checked out my Google Analytics page, where I wasn't really expecting to see much action. Boy was I wrong. Check out some of my stats below.
At first, I was extremely proud of myself. Thinking "I can't believe how much traffic I'm getting". However, something didn't quite sit right with me. I knew I had just started to really work hard on my sites, and we all know (or should know) success doesn't come without hard work.
So I decided to do a little more digging into where this traffic was coming from. I looked into my acquisition section of Google Analytics and I started to get my answer.
As you can see, I have 45 sessions from social mediums (twitter, facebook, google+ etc.). I have 82 from organic search. These two made immediate sense to me since I could actually track where they were coming from. However the 1,382 from direct, and 1,721 from referral wasn't making much sense to me at all. I figured, maybe this is from Wealthy Affiliate, and other friends and family checking out my site? Well lets dig a little deeper by clicking on the referral source.
Great, now I'm even more confused! Well thank God for Google, because I quickly was able to figure out what all of these sources were. They are referral spam, also called ghost traffic. To my knowledge, this traffic never actually hits your site, they just leave a trail of their spam websites to entice you to check them out. I also believe this is their attempt at getting additional traffic and 'SEO Juice'. Personally, I don't know if this ghost traffic has any direct negative or positive effects on your ranking, but I can tell you it indirectly effects you negatively by giving you a false idea of how your website is performing!
I hope this blog helped explain somethings about Google Analytics. There are ways to block this traffic (a quick Google search will help you find a couple articles), I'm just not yet sure the best way to go about it. Plus I figured that this post is long enough as is.
If anyone has anything they would like to add please share your thoughts! I'm still quite new to all of this and Wealthy Affiliate, but I thought this would be worth sharing some insight on for others.
Recent Comments
35
Thanks Matt, ghost traffic is bad from your website. I did not know about that so much before, when my hubby tired to save my hacked website, he told me about it.
So that being said, I see you still have a positive overall opinion of Google Analytics. I've heard good things! I'm actually just getting started with a new niche and website and I was actually looking into doing freelance web analytics for other websites so, of course, I'd like to get certified first so I have some credibility. This leads to my question for you who obviously is fairly familiar with GA (and sorry if this is off-topic): What is your opinion on the Google Analytics certification program? Is it industry-recognized? Is it a good source of training?
Yes I absolutely view Google Analytics in a positive way! Its an amazing piece of software that is super powerful and effective when utilized correctly. We have so much information thrown at us online and being able to understand it and make decisions based on this information is valuable these days. Are you talking about the courses through Google? I would try to find some people that took it and see what they think of it.
Coming from someone who has two college degrees I think some 'recognized certifications' can be over hyped and in this business its all about actually applying what you learn. If this course teaches you how to really utilize GA, then I would absolutely take it! I might look into it myself now!
Yes--from what I understand (having not actually taken it myself yet), Google offers a certification program called "Analytics Academy." From what I have heard, they train you on web analytics through free online courses and, at the end, they have a test and when you pass, you get a certification. I couldn't find anything on the actual certificate they supposedly offer, but I've heard from a couple of people that you get one and that's it's supposedly an industry-recognized certification.
Here's a link! If you scroll to the topic that is second-from-the-bottom of the page, you will find the Analytics Academy. Maybe you will find it useful.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Yea, the only traffic you should monitor from Google Analytics is Social, Organic, and Direct. The rest is junk and doesn't matter. Also to answer your question (or insight) as to whether or not it directly or indirectly affects your Google Rankings. The simple answer is No.
99% of the referral traffic are either auto bots or crawlers from other sites or databases that just ping traffic to and from your site. This also might effect your "Sign-Ups" per say.. Esp if you don't have any anti-spam protection plugin's.
This was a major deal years ago when "BackLinks" were the main thing to go to. However, as we know, times have changed. Everyone doesn't know that though, or they just don't care. They still run their bots out their on the net.
As far as your own site goes. It won't have any dramatic effects on your ranking. You can also take a few more steps to add custom codes on your site to block all of that useless traffic. I wouldn't recommend that for anyone who doesn't know what they are doing though. I think there are even a few tutorials on WA on it. Try a search and see if ya can find them.
Thanks for your input, John! I'll definitely look into some ways to block them. Personally I find it obnoxious, but I am thankful it doesn't have any negative affects on ranking.
Brilliant post man. Absolutely correct...So much of my spam traffic is from sharebuttons (not the proper share buttons...its another spam site..)
It wont hurt you too much...because Google sees it for what it is...but it really tramples your bounce rate...
Thank you, Jason! I realize it doesn't directly hurt our sites, but your right, it certainly does ruin our stats!
Wow, that is mind blowing...I had no idea, and don't remember reading about this before, very nice!
Hi! =)
I get a little bit of this ghost traffic as well and it used to irritate me a lot but I just don't pay attention to it anymore.
As time passes and I add more content to my website I am starting to see a reverse in my source traffic. I am getting a bit more organic traffic as well as social traffic. This is all because your content slowly earns the trust of google and gets ranked on the first pages.
I did try to block this fake traffic but doesn't seem to work much or at least I'm too lazy to really look into it lol.
Your post will be very useful to people who are getting started with google analytics because like you said, this traffic thing can be really confusing and people might get their spirit a bit too high when in fact they're not really getting traffic (yet!)
Well done, thanks! =)
Cheers
Sarah
Hi Sarah! Glad you liked my post! I sure hope people find it helpful. Personally the ghost traffic doesn't 'bother' me all that much, it just is annoying when you are trying to figure out the real metrics of what kind of traffic you're getting to the site! I can't wait until I start to see a reverse in my source traffic as well!
I am sure they will find it useful ! It will reassure many of them lol
I know, it's annoying, it's like the "direct source" traffic, you have no idea how people got on your website and that makes it hard to know how to target people better.. but still, google analytics is really awesome
I am sure you will see a reverse in your source of traffic, it's only a matter of time. I wonder if all websites have "ghost traffic" or not though?
Yes, Google Analytics is definitely still awesome!! I guess I could've expressed that better in this post. Yeah it would definitely be interesting to know who has ghost traffic, and where it actually originates from.
I think they want us to check out their spam sites. Just another avenue for them since they can't really target people through email anymore thanks to spam filtering!
I was once ripped off by one of them "ali" something.. but that was before I built my website and learned about these ghost visitors. Aliexpress or something. Ordered something and never received it -_-
Oh wow! I almost bought stuff from an 'ali' something too once, I wonder if it was the same place! Glad I never did
Haha aw, Sarah! Trust me my bubble was bursted as well when I figured out that thousands of these users, weren't actually users!
See more comments
By the way, post it in your own blog, it will drive you traffic from that topic. :)
I did, thanks for the idea Shirley!