Blocking non-U.S. traffic to fight referral spam?
-
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/
-
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.
-
-
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,
-
-
I have often wondered, does Google count these referrals as true traffic?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
How valuable is non-local organic traffic for local business?
Hey friends! I work for a local digital marketing agency in Greenville, SC – serving primarily local small businesses. Over the past six months, we've increased our monthly organic traffic by almost 100%. The majority of this traffic is coming to blogs we've written over the past year on industry topics and trends. I love seeing our traffic increase, but it hasn't necessarily translated to more quality leads. Conversion numbers have largely remained the same. I think one reason is that a lot of this traffic isn't local. Here's my question: as a local business, how valuable is content that ranks well and drives organic traffic, when the traffic isn't local, and from users we would never work with? A lot of this content has earned links and grown our authority, so I suppose we've seen benefit, but I'm struggling to convince myself that it's really that valuable. I know local content is key, but it feels like what we want to educate on isn't searched locally. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!
Local SEO | | brooksmanley3 -
Branded vs Non Branded Homepage?
So I understand that I'm never going to get google review stars appearing on my homepage. The only term I really want my homepage to rank for is the term 'dentist liverpool'. This figures. But what I'm seeing from my google analytics is that I can rank pretty much any keyword really well (with stars and a great serp entry) except my homepage. Which is languishing at position 3-5. Now I made some observations from the data and the only people who are landing on my homepage are branded searches. So people who are searching for us. Why cannot I just make a page and optimise it for 'dentist Liverpool' and go for the number one spot? That way all the branded people can end up on the homepage and everyone else looking for a dentist in Liverpool can land on my highly optimised 'dentist Liverpool' page? I think I might be missing something really obvious here and know i'd need to de-optimise the home page. But I find it so easy to rank for all sorts of keywords but our homepage (because it has everything on it) is just not getting to position one. It's not specific enough to that keyword. Also how awesome would it be to have the only serp entry with 250 google reviews and stars and sitelinks and all that cool stuff?
Local SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
How Can I Get more traffic for me own blog ?
Hello guys I have my own blog called Hero-t3ch ,How can I get more traffic ??
Local SEO | | mohamednabil0 -
Does having 3 city's in my Title Tag help or hurt me?
Hello!! I have a health insurance agency located in a small city. I need to reach more area's, and I'm wondering if adding a couple more cities to the Title Tag actually helps? Or should I go the other route and try achieving it with location landing pages? I've seen other websites do it, but I'm hesitant. Any advice welcome 🙂 The site is http://wilkersoninsuranceagency.com/ in Coppell, Tx It currently ranks 3rd on Google. Thank you in advance!! 🙂 xx
Local SEO | | MissThumann0 -
Does blocking traffic from a country via a firewall affect my ranking?
The main conversion point on my site is a contact form completion. Approximately a third of my conversions last year were from an international country we don't sell our services in, and all those conversions were attempts to sell us services. We are considering blocking the traffic to the site from that country. I'm trying to figure out if that will negatively affect my SEO rank here in the US before we proceed with that plan. Does anyone have any experience with implementing this tactic?
Local SEO | | Bear.Group0 -
Google's Geo Search Setting Gone Cuckoo!
Hey Everybody! I thought I'd post about this because pretty much all of our members who do Local SEO are bound to run into this. Last week, when I was in the middle of training someone, I ran into something bizarre. Using Google's search settings to set my location to a remote locale, the local packs were returning me results for the correct city, but the organic results accompanying the pack were showing me results that appeared to be based on my own IP address instead ... in other words, Google was overriding my designated geolocation in favor of where it knows I'm actually located. I was relieved to see Mike Blumenthal post on this (helped me realize I wasn't going crazy - haha) and I recommend that everyone who does Local for a living take a look: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/05/24/google-location-results-still-screwy/ I also recommend checking out this G+ convo going on between John Mueller and others: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerrySimmonds/posts/1BZ6guvy9mE John's initial thought was that nothing has changed ... but something has definitely changed. Do some of your own searches and see what you come up with. Main takeaway here is that if you are trying to approximate clients' rankings in cities not your own, the results you are seeing may be very weird right now. Not sure if this is a temporary glitch or the forerunner to some change coming our way. This is a story to stay on top of, for sure. What do you you all see?
Local SEO | | Moz.HelpTeam0 -
Significant organic traffic increase from outside of my service area
I run a local service based business. About 6 months ago, I updated my homepage title tag to incorporate the phrase "near me" (I performed other optimizations as well). Over the last few months, I've noticed increased traffic, calls and online bookings from different areas around the country. I was perplexed, I thought I may have mis-targeted my ppc campaign. After some digging, I found out that my home page ranks #2 in the organic listings for a couple core service keywords with the "near me" phrase added. Of course, my bounce rate, from these visitors outside of my local area, is pretty high (65%). Also, the majority of these visitors are using mobile devices. I see an opportunity here to possibly provide relevant information to the searchers, based on their geographic area. The problem is that, I can't risk modifying my website for the sake of this "out of area" traffic. If I were to provide a page to a visitor based on their ip, could that be considered a black hat tactic? I don't want to do anything that will compromise my core business. Any advice will be welcomed.
Local SEO | | CWG75750 -
Citations for a non-local campaign?
Is it worth building citations if one is targeting a national campaign with NO local keywords? Even if they have some effect, are they really worth the time, effort and costs?
Local SEO | | Gavo0