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
-
.xml sitemap showing in SERP
Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.
Technical SEO | | Kyleroe950 -
SERP Title shows up-with-dashes
Occasionally I see the our 'listings' on Google where the Title line shows up with dashes... like sony-professional-hard-drive - TapeandMedia.com It appears to be the URL shortened and rehashed. This example was after I searched for "Sony PSZ-HA1T" without the quotes. The title for this page is <title></span><span class="html-tag">Sony 1TB Professional Portable External Hard Disk Drive (PSZ-HA1T)</span><span class="html-tag"></title> and the url is http://www.tapeandmedia.com/sony-1tb-professional-portable-hard-drive.asp Link to image: http://i.imgur.com/FmvAn6c.jpg Other searches (like "Sony 1tb PSZ-HA1T") yield normal looking SERP Titles Does anyone know why this happens and what I can do to avoid this? FmvAn6c.jpg
Technical SEO | | BWallacejr0 -
Inurl: search shows results without keyword in URL
Hi there, While doing some research on the indexation status of a client I ran into something unexpected. I have my hypothesis on what might be happing, but would like a second opinion on this. The query 'site:example.org inurl:index.php' returns about 18.000 results. However, when I hover my mouse of these results, no index.php shows up in the URL. So, Google seems to think these (then duplicate content) URLs still exist, but a 301 has changed the actual goal URL? A similar things happens for inurl:page. In fact, all the 'index.php' and 'page' parameters were removed over a year back, so there in fact shouldn't be any of those left in the index by now. The dates next to the search results are 2005, 2008, etc. (i.e. far before 2013). These dates accurately reflect the times these forums topic were created. Long story short: are these ~30.000 'phantom URLs' in the index out of total of ~100.000 indexed pages hurting the search rankings in some way? What do you suggest to get them out? Submitting a 100% coverage sitemap (just a few days back) doesn't seem to have any effect on these phantom results (yet).
Technical SEO | | Theo-NL0 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Screaming Frog Content Showing charset=UTF-8
I am running a site through Screaming Frog and many of the pages under "Content" are reading text/html; charset=UTF-8. Does this harm ones SEO and what does this really mean? I'm running his site along with this competitors and the competitors seems very clean with content pages reading text/html. What does one do to change this if it is a negative thing? Thank you
Technical SEO | | seoessentials0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Google Cache is not showing in my page
Hello Everyone, I have issue in my Page, My category page (http://www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html) is regular cached in past, but before sometime it can't show the cached result in SERP and not show in cached result , I have also fetch this link in google web master, but can't get the result, it is showing following message. 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /search?q=cache%3A http%3A//www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know. My category page rank is 2 and its keyword is on first in google.com, so i am little bit worried about this page cache issue, Can someone please tell me why is this happening? Is this a temporary issue? Help me to solve out this cache issue and once again my page will regularly cache in future. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
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
