If you have an existing website running and you have been tracking it for some time, then you might ask if you could filter the referrals from your historical report, the answer is yes.

Although we cannot remove the historical data, however, we could filter them by adding a new segment. The steps are

  • Under Reporting, on Acquisitions > All Traffic > Referrals.
  • As shown below, click the All Sessions, to show the segments.
  • Click the + NEW SEGMENT, then enter your Segment Name, for example, 0_New
  • Under the Conditions, there are two conditions to add
    • Condition 1, to exclude the referral spam and bots
    • Condition 2, to include the default source or the good referrals.
  • As you can see, I am filtering out the unwanted referrals and adding in the source or referrals that I wanted to see in analytics. As this is manually done, and it might take some time. Also take note of the highlighted and follow the fields as shown, once everything is done, click Save.

Once you have filtered your IP and the referral spam and bots, the analytics data will be more accurate. Only then, you could research your visitors’ ages, demographics or behaviors. This is important as you would understand how the visitors interact with your site or landing pages, and along the way making changes to your audiences.



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PIOFJR Premium
Thanks Jeremy. Liked and bookmark. Pio
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TashiDeleh Premium
Thanks Pio
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Phoenix2015 Premium
Tashi never mind about my last question, I could figure it out. Thanks,
Chittranjan
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TashiDeleh Premium
Am glad to hear it.
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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
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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
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TashiDeleh Premium
hmm, sure, do let me know when you remember the website
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TashiDeleh Premium
Wow, thanks will take a look!
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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
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