Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Strange keyword showing in GA
-
Hi All,
Since last two days I am seeing a very strange keyword appearing in Google Analytics. Why such keyword appearing in GA? any idea?
Please see keyword in attachment.
Thanks
-
It was kind of humorous, at first. It's now showing as returning organic traffic. Direct link to screencap from the original post:
-
Hi Alick,
You might find this article useful: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data - the two options that are listed is blocking bot traffic using htaccess - or filter them in Analytics. If you check the link I gave you in my first answer - there are also some useful resources listed. Other resources can be found here: http://moz.com/community/q/google-analytics-referral-spam (and off course - just google "referral spam" - it's quite a popular subject)
Hope this helps
Dirk
-
Hi All,
Today I got same error for my other website as well. I don't know how to stop this.
Thanks
-
Referral spam is getting out of control lately for all my clients' sites. I really hope Google can do something about it soon.
-
Got to love that referal spam!
I've not seen this one yet in my reports, kind of disappointing really :(.
-
Hi
it's an attempt to combine analytics spam & being funny. In each case you're not the only one - see this discussion posted yesterday : http://moz.com/community/q/analytics-spammer-can-haz-humors-who-else (the image is a bit better - the words are not in a foreign language, but are funny faces made in symbols)
rgds
Dirk
-
Ok, the language seems Thai to, how do I know it? I am a Castle fan and just watched the recent episode of it J
Anyways, the reason why it is appearing is because someone is searching for these keywords and your website is appearing in the search results at his end. This could be a bot, a machine or may be a real human.
If the search number is one or few, you don’t really have to worry about it but if its in a decent amount like 10 or so in that case you should take preventive measure like check your security, as someone can try to hack your website or some other issues.
Why your website is appearing? Again many reasons, the kind of links pointing back to your website, one or few of them could be shady, the content you just shared went a lil more viral in other part of the world or several other reasons.
My idea is to do a bit more research about where this traffic is coming from, how often and what is the amount of traffic that you are receiving, how much time a people spend on the website when enter using this keyword and more.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google SERPs Show Different Title
Hi Guys, Can anyone please help with my situation. My domain is www.greedybins.com.au. I had title setup in every pages differently, and it has been 2 months since I made the changes. I keep checking by using site:www.greedybins.com.au in search. So far, only 1 title that been show correctly in SERPs. I used SEO Yoast before, I changed to All In One SEO Pack plugin, the titles are changing, but still not accurate as I made it. Somehow Google altered it by itself. I have tried fetch and submit sitemap couple times from Google Search Console. Could anyone please advise?
Technical SEO | | ray.soms0 -
How to show number of products in your Google SERP?
I have used to rich snippet to my website & everything is working fine except showing the total number of products listed in the particular category. Check out the screenshot below: aH7XM
Technical SEO | | promodirect0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - content keywords containing spam?
Hi all, When I looked in Google Webmaster Tools today I found under the menu Google Index, Content Keywords, that the list is full of spammy keywords (E.g. Viagra (no. 1) and stuff like that) Around april we built a whole new website, uploaded a new xml-sitemap, and did all the other things Google Webmaster Tools suggest when one is creating a Google Webmaster Account. Under the menu "Security Issues" nothing is mentioned. All together I find it har d to believe that the site is hacked - so WHY is Google finding these content keywords on our site?? Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts? Best regards, Christian
Technical SEO | | Henrik_Kruse0 -
What can I do to stop ranking for a keyword that has nothing to do with the companies website?
A website that we maintain keeps ranking for the keyword 'homeless shelter'. The company is UTILIS USA and they produce heavy duty shelters for military personnel. They have nothing to do with homeless shelters but continue to receive traffic concerning the phrase.
Technical SEO | | ReviveMedia0 -
Beating a keyword Domain
Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot? I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st? Any help and advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Site disappearing from search for a certain keyword
I was wondering if someone has encountered the same problem as me. I was doing some changes on the frontpage of one of my clients' website, especially some redirections, and my site has disappeared from Google for the main keyword on the page. So, if I look for my page on Google, instead of seeing my page first, I no longer see my page, at all. All I've done was a 301 redirection from index.html to the domain name. Now, I changed everything back to how it was before. More precisely, I've done that 2 weeks ago. But, no change in Google. I checked Bing and Yahoo, my site appears first when I search for that specific keyword. Any ideas how long will it take for Google to see that I am not doing anything wrong with redirections? Or any idea at all?
Technical SEO | | webmasterles0 -
Keywords in file names vs folder names
We understand the value of a keyword phrase included in the URL. Is there more value to having that phrase in the folder name of the URL or the file name or does it matter? Example: http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design.php or http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design/ Which is best? Thanks, Wick Smith
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0 -
Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?
Hi, I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally. Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ. Example: Normal visitor sees: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts Google and SEOMOZ see: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work. Any help or explanation would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Function50