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.
Direct traffic spam on Google Analytics: how can you identify and filter it?
-
One of my smaller clients noticed a huge jump in direct traffic visits last month. The bounce rate was around 97% so I'm pretty certain that most of the traffic was illegitimate. I know how to filter out spam referrals and organic keywords in Google Analytics. However I'm not sure what to do about direct traffic spam. Are there recommendations for filtering this out? Can I identify spam IP addresses?
-
Can you add a secondary dimension of medium and upload another screenshot? You will be able to cut out a large number of spam visits when you so that.
Essentially you will end up with hostname (not set) having medium of referral and medium of none.
Upload a screenshot and I may be in a better place to advise
-
I was looking for spam hostnames however a large volume of traffic coming to my clients website is from "not set" hostnames. I have feeling the (not set) hostname includes spammers. Do you know what else I can do about this?
-
Yep, hostname is where I would start looking as well. Also geographic segments like country and region if your site is targeting only a particular country/state/city.
And building on what Brett is saying, find a list of common nuisance bots and block them via robots.txt. That may help as well.
-
Hello Rosemary,
Couple of things to check in GA under view settings under admin make sure Bot filtering is checked. Also under the menu in filtering you can add and IP exclusion list (from other office locations for example). Further you can add websites that you do not want referral traffic to be recording from this can be done under property/tracking info/ referral exclusion list
-
Create a segment that only shows traffic to the hostname. (yoursite.com, youtube.com, paypal.com) That's it. It's pretty amazing how much traffic would appear to be spam.
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
-
Why is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?
A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P0 -
Google analytics suddenly stopped tracking all my landing pages
Hey guys. I love the new update of GA. Looks so clean. So, of course, I was excited to see how my landing pages were doing. I went to behavior, all content, all pages. And I noticed it's only showing me 19 pages out of the 93 I have indexed. And none of the top ones at all! Can't find them anywhere in GA! Anyone seen this before? Thank you so much
Reporting & Analytics | | Meier0 -
How to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view?
Hi, Need help on how to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view. I have been searching and the only information available is excluding IP address of internal traffic. Is there any way to exclude traffic through a mobile MAC address?
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadija_K0 -
We have a client that wants to apply UTM URL tagging to track local organic traffic in Google Analytics. Is there any benefit in doing this?
One of our clients requested that we apply UTM URL tagging to better track organic traffic in Google Analytics. We found this to be an odd request because we are most familiar with UTM tracking for special campaigns (referral tracking, PPC, email tracking, etc). Is there any benefit of applying UTM tags to urls to analyze local organic traffic in Google Analytics? Are there any resources out there about this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
How can I see what Google sees when it crawls my page?
In other words, how can see the text and what not it sees from start to finish on each page. I know there was a site, but I can't remember it.
Reporting & Analytics | | tiffany11030 -
On google analytics what is Mozilla Compatible Agent under browser and OS?
On my Google Analytics (I know this is not SEOMOZ) I have a lot of visits from mozilla compatible agent with 100% bounce rate. Does anybody know what this is?
Reporting & Analytics | | essentialworld0 -
Why is my direct traffic down DRASTICALLY?
I have been seeing a trend for a while that is intesifying. My direct traffic numbers are down A LOT. We are not down 50% to LY (in actual number not just percentage of traffic) I am trying to understand what could be the causes of this issue. I was considering simply bigger meaner competition, but I actually perform decently on my returning customers. Also my performance on my brand keyword is more inline with my current trend so I would except these KW to do equally as bad if the actual brand/store was the issue. The more surprising even, is the fact that I can trace back the start of the trend exactly to the day. Overnight on Sept 22 LY direct traffic went down 30% (to LY) when it was trending UP 20-25%(to LY) before. Now, we did do a redesign of the website on May 2011 (4 months before the drop), and did change host Oct 2011 (a couple weeks after the start of the trend). Do you have any clue as to why this could be happening? Did GA start tracking direct traffic differently?
Reporting & Analytics | | CassisGroup
Any thoughts?0 -
Google Analytics: Difference Between Goal Conversions & Goal Completions
When using Google Analytics, what is the difference between total goal conversions and total goal completions? We have many goals set up in a lead generation environment. Therefore, the only element of conversion is submitted a lead and arriving on the "Thank You" page. THose thank you pages are tagged accordingly. When we run reports though, the number of "Total Goal Conversions" and "Total Goal Completions" never match up.
Reporting & Analytics | | eMagineSEO0