Blocking non-U.S. traffic to fight referral spam?

[irapasternack]

I've been thinking about ways to deal with referral spam in Google Analytics. From what I can tell, most if not all of this is coming from outside the U.S. I'd love any insight into the following questions related to this issue:

For U.S. based local businesses, I'm wondering if we should just block all traffic from outside of the U.S. -would there be negative SEO factors if we use this approach?

Would it be better to just create GA segments to filter out this traffic, rather than actually blocking it?

Has anyone found success in using filters or segments in this way?

Is anyone seeing referral spam from within the U.S.?

Edit: I just came across this suggestion, that setting 2 filters (for invalid hostname and screen resolution) can solve most of the issue. Any insight on this alternative vs. my ideas above??  https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/

[Carloseo]

Hi Toby, if you mean that if this traffic has an influence on search ranking, it doesn't, in fact, google doesn't use any data from Google Analytics as a ranking factor. Here is an explanation from Matt Cutts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU

And if you think about it, it makes sense since even a lot of people uses GA not everyone does so it wouldn't be fair.

[Carloseo]

• Hi Ira,

  Including only traffic from USA will stop many of the spammers but many will continue hitting you, as you can see in the screenshot I attached. I recommend you to try the solution a filter based on your hostnames.

  This solution requires a little more time to set up, but it has **3 huge advantages, **and you won't have to exclude all the world except USA.

  • You will stop the spam before it hits you, adding a filter for the referral after you see it will stop it, but by the time you apply it you will have already hits of the spam.
  • You will need only ONE filter to stop all ghost spam, instead of creating various sets of filters.
  • Lately, some of the spammers(e.g. free-social-buttons) have been hitting GA accounts with fake direct visits along with the referral, the filter for the referral won’t stop the direct visit, on the other hand. The Valid hostname filter will stop ALL ghost spam in any form whether it shows as a referral, keyword or direct visit.

  This is what I've been using on my accounts for the last moths and I haven't received a single hit of ghost spam. Combining the valid hostname filter with a Campaign Source filter you will control the spam. Here is a detailed guide and more information about these solutions.

• http://www.ohow.co/what-is-referrer-spam-how-stop-it-guide/

  Hope it helps,

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[T0BY]

I have often wondered, does Google count these referrals as true traffic?

[KeriMorgret]

I'll let people with more accounts chime in on the management. I'm using this on just a couple of accounts right now, and keep an eye on my refers to see if anything new pops up.

[irapasternack]

Thanks Keri.  How often do you you update things? Given that my company manages dozens of GA accounts, this can get pretty time consuming.

Is there any real benefit to filtering the traffic out vs. just using segments to keep it out of reports? With segments, all that is needed is to keep a custom segment updated that can be shared across all GA accounts, so I'm thinking that would be a lot more efficient.

[KeriMorgret]

I block based on hostname, and that's worked for me. There's a good post at http://www.analyticsedge.com/2014/12/removing-referral-spam-google-analytics/ with several options.

Edited to add: always keep a profile that has NO filters or anything else, just in case you accidentally end up blocking valid data.