Referral source not indexed or showing up in GSC
-
I've been doing a lot of research about this and have not been able to find an answer just yet.
Google analytics is showing over 43k referrals from about 35 different spam sources. I checked the hostname thinking that they were ghost referrals and I was surprised to see that they all show our domain so that part is disqualified. The next thing I did was to look at the referral path to look at the pages that were pointing to the site and when I clicked to launch the link the window loaded YouTube or did not load at all.
After doing a bit of research I came across **Disavowing Links, **at first it sounded like the perfect solution for this, but after reading all the warnings that everyone gives I decided to spend more time researching and to use that as a last resource.
I proceeded to check Google Search Console to identify those backlinks and to make sure they were coming up there as well.
To my surprise, none of these links show up in GSC. Neither for the www or the non-www property.
I have decided to avoid disavowing the links before making sure that this is the correct thing to do. Although it may still seem like it is, I want to ask for an expert opinion or if anyone else has experienced this. If GSC doesn't see them it means that Google is not indexing them, my problem is that GA still sees them and that concerns me. I don't want this to affect our site by getting penalized, or by losing ranking.
Please help!
-
Thank you Thomas, that was my biggest concern. I'll definitely take a look at the guide.
Cheers!
-
It sounds like you're getting referral spam in Google analytics.
They aren't actually linking to you, so the good news is that it won't impact you within Google search, the worst thing they can do is skew your data. Their aim is to try and get you to their sites.
This is a guide that's great for blocking all referral spam: http://help.analyticsedge.com/spam-filter/definitive-guide-to-removing-google-analytics-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
-
Do Ghost Traffic/Spam Referrals factor into rankings, or do they just affect the CTR and Bounce Rate in Analytics?
So, by now I'm sure everyone that pays attention to their Analytics/GWT's (or Search Console, now) has seen spam referral traffic and ghost traffic showing up (Ilovevitaly.com, simple-share-buttons.com, semalt.com, etc). Here is my question(s)... Does this factor into rankings in anyway? We all know that click through rate and bounce rate (might) send signals to the algorithm and signal a low quality site, which could affect rankings. I guess what I'm asking is are they getting any of that data from Analytics? Since ghost referral traffic never actually visits my site, how could it affect the CTR our Bounce Rate that the algorithm is seeing? I'm hoping that it only affects my Bounce/CTR in Analytics and I can just filter that stuff out with filters in Analytics and it won't ever affect my rankings. But.... since we don't know where exactly the algorithm is pulling data on CTR and bounce rate, I guess I'm just worried that having a large amount of this spam/ghost traffic that I see in analytics could be causing harm to my rankings.... Sorry, long winded way of saying... Should I pay attention to this traffic? Should I care about it? Will it harm my site or my rankings at all? And finally... when is google going to shut these open back doors in Analytics so that Vitaly and his ilk are shut down forever?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seequs2 -
Google Analytics shows wrong position
1 For a particular targeted keyword Google Analytic shows Avg position as 20 for 10 Impresions . On the other hand other Tools like Rank Tracker/Authority Labs shows no Ranking at all . When I Manually check Google results, that particular page is not listed at all in Google Search for that particular keyword in Top 400 search Results. Its almost 30-40 days back done Optimization for that keyword, no Keyword stuffing (2%) or nothing blackhat. Keyword has just 300+ search per month . MOZ and other Tools like MyWebsite Auditor shows no major issues with On Page SEO , overall good score for onpage SEO . Any one has any ideas as why this happens or happened to someone before . Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aus0070 -
Tool to check google index status for backlinks?
I would like to check to see which backlink urls are indexed in Google. Is there a tool that can automate this work or will I have to do it manually?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
Does showing the date published for an article in the SERPS help or hurt click-through rate?
Does showing the date published for an article in the SERPS help or hurt click-through rate?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com1 -
Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?
I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Page not being indexed or crawled and no idea why!
Hi everyone, There are a few pages on our website that aren't being indexed right now on Google and I'm not quite sure why. A little background: We are an IT training and management training company and we have locations/classrooms around the US. To better our search rankings and overall visibility, we made some changes to the on page content, URL structure, etc. Let's take our Washington DC location for example. The old address was: http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/location.aspx?id=uswd44 And the new one is: http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/uswd44/reston/it-and-management-training All of the SEO changes aren't live yet, so just bear with me. My question really regards why the first URL is still being indexed and crawled and showing fine in the search results and the second one (which we want to show) is not. Changes have been live for around a month now - plenty of time to at least be indexed. In fact, we don't want the first URL to be showing anymore, we'd like the second URL type to be showing across the board. Also, when I type into Google site:http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/uswd44/reston/it-and-management-training I'm getting a message that Google can't read the page because of the robots.txt file. But, we have no robots.txt file. I've been told by our web guys that the two pages are exactly the same. I was also told that we've put in an order to have all those old links 301 redirected to the new ones. But still, I'm perplexed as to why these pages are not being indexed or crawled - even manually submitted it into Webmaster tools. So, why is Google still recognizing the old URLs and why are they still showing in the index/search results? And, why is Google saying "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" Thanks in advance! Pedram
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
Ways to find private - non-indexed forums in a niche
I would wondering if there were ways to find non-indexed content in private forums/discussion boards. Is there a scalable 'foot-print' that suggests the forum has a private section?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0