So I have a new website and started tracking with Google Analytics, sometimes I noted that the tracking isn’t making any sense for a newly setup site, as some days, there will have relatively few visitors, and some days, there’s a large sum of visitors appear. After much research, I realize this is some sort of referral spam or bots that hit your reports with multiple visits at once, leaving you some fake data.

Further to that, most people did not realize but Google Analytics also tracks your own visits to your site. And hence inaccurate data, making the researching process become meaningless.

I am pretty sure most of you have similar experiences, so in this post I’ll share some information with you on how to stop Google Analytics from tracking the referral spam and your own visits to your site. And also way to filter out the referral spam from your historical data. So let’s get started!



Join the Discussion
Write something…
Recent messages
PIOFJR Premium
Thanks Jeremy. Liked and bookmark. Pio
Reply
TashiDeleh Premium
Thanks Pio
Reply
Phoenix2015 Premium
Tashi never mind about my last question, I could figure it out. Thanks,
Chittranjan
Reply
TashiDeleh Premium
Am glad to hear it.
Reply
Phoenix2015 Premium
Tashi,
After I applied the segment with conditions it did not excluded the bots I excluded, when I see historic data. It shows same report as All Session. Can you please tell me why so and how can I fix it? Thanks,
Chittranjan
Reply
Colestock198 Premium
This is great training and I was filtering referral sites individually like this for a while but I found a way to set up a filter to block out all the spam without having to make multiple filters.

I can't remember off the top of my head what the name of the website was that had the walkthrough but it involved including valid host names instead of blocking out the individual bots..

I really like this for a couple of reasons. Theres no need for setting up multiple filters and because it blocks out the spam before it ever hits your site (preventative! thats the word needed!)..

I haven't had a single issue since I implemented this filter, if I remember what the site was I'll get back to you. It could possibly be in one of my recent blogs here but I'm not sure. Otherwise, I'll just have to create training for it!

Thank you very much for the info on filtering the past results, I was wondering about that and didn't get the chance to look it up.

Take it easy man,
-Zach
Reply
TashiDeleh Premium
hmm, sure, do let me know when you remember the website
Reply
TashiDeleh Premium
Wow, thanks will take a look!
Reply
Phoenix2015 Premium
Hey Tashi,
Very nice training, I used it, I was also facing problem of unwanted bots traffic. I hope now I can avoid them and get the accurate traffic stats. Thanks,
Chittranjan
Reply
Top