Why am i seeing google.inc in analytics as direct traffic? Bug?
-
Recently i have seen two clients sites see a spike in direct traffic coming from google.inc. Is this a bot/bug which i should filter out. Just a bit confused why google.inc has visited our clients site 676 times!
Any insight would be great.
-
I have recently (in the last week) followed Carlos' OHow article on removing fake crawler and ghost referral traffic to help produce clean data. It is a great blog post and helped a lot.
Second to this, I was over on SEO Round Table earlier, apparently according to a Google hangout from John Mueller the Google Analytics team are aware of referral spam as an issue. Hopefully in the long run they will get on top of this issue.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-referrer-spam-20394.html
In the mean time Carlos' article below will help you set up filters and htaccess blocking of crawlers etc.
-
You can see in this image the network used by free-buttons and the amount of fake direct visits it leaves http://i.imgur.com/Kx4PD15.png . They started in middle May when the problem with fake direct visits began.
Campaign Source is the right way to exclude the referral. However, it won't stop the fake direct visits that free-buttons (and maybe others) leave. Ghost spam has changed, I have seen it in different forms referral (the most common), organic, events and the most confusing direct visits.
Another disadvantage of the Campaign Source solution is that everytime a new spam shows up you have to add to a filter, and by the time you add it you already have hits.
That's why I recommend the other solution with valid hostnames since ONE filter will prevent all ghost spam in any form.
Hope it helps,
-
Custom filter - Filter field- Campaign Source with a Regex filter pattern
-
What method are you using to filter free-social-buttons and the rest of the spam?
-
Hi Carlos,
Thanks for your response.I have already filtered out all the dodgy spam such as free-social-buttons. So it is not that. I have also checked my last few days and I have not had another visit from google inc. It seems like it just appeared for a month and has disappeared.
Just need to know if it is spam or not. Has anyone else seen direct visits come from google inc.?
-
If the hostname is "not set" or a fake one then is ghost spam most likely, if you check your referrals you will probably see free-social-buttons(might be others) this one I noticed that hits with fake direct visits along with the referral spam.
Conventional methods of stopping the spam like excluding the referral won't have any effect in the direct visit. To take care of all ghost spam, you should use a filter based on your hostname.
You can find more information on this related question
Hope it helps,
-
I have checked under Technology - Network and this is where it shows google.inc. Viewing under All Traffic-Channels and adding second dimension it does show not set. I have checked the source and medium and it says (direct)/(none).
-
Have you also checked the medium and campaign parameters for this source? It could be that somebody is just messing with you and as you can use UTM to mess up every traffic source.
-
Hi Blue, in which dimension you are seeing google.inc? If you choose hostname as a second dimension do you see "not set"?
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
-
Google Analytic Bug For Browser Report
Hi All, I am checking browser report since many years today I was checking browser report what I find "DESKTOP" is showing in Browser & OS section with lots of traffic. Screenshot attached Is it google analytic bug? Can anyone please help me? PeGK7
Reporting & Analytics | | Arnold30 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
Google Analytics complexe solution?
Hello, We have Google Analytics on our website and we have started to track the conversions.
Reporting & Analytics | | lunacloud
Basically we have a goal with 3 steps: Account Details (Personal Information) Confirmation (Mobile Confirmation Code) Email ( confirmation link) On the last step (Destination Goal) we send an email to the customer with the account confirmation link, the tracking works perfectly. Our problem is with the Goal Completions on "Traffic Sources" >> "AdWords" >> "Campaigns", Analytics doesn't add the conversions. This problem is related to the email confirmation? There is any solution to overcome this problem? Thank you! yzujFZU.png f4fay1G.png0 -
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 -
A switch from Search to Direct traffic from Feb 2012
I have read about the Google algorithm updates galore in 2012. I would therefore be inclined to suspect a sudden sharp drop in Search traffic this year to be caused by such updates. However, I am seeing what appears to be a direct switch from 'Search' to 'Direct' traffic as of about February 16th this year. There are no specific brand-building exercises or general advertising campaigns happening around this time for the site in question. It seems very UN-explainable? I wondered if there are any thoughts from the various lurking gurus? I have attached GA screenshot.. DjTu1.png
Reporting & Analytics | | MikiP0 -
Tips for migrating Google News traffic?
We are about to relaunch a site that gets a lot of Google News traffic. We are not changing domain, but the site structure is changing greatly, with the URLs of both news index pages and articles being shaken up. Obviously, we've 301-ed every page to its closest equivalent on the new site. We've also got a news sitemap. As we are not changing domain, is there anything further we need to do to help protect our Google News traffic. On a related note, does anyone have a relaible way of measuring traffic from Google News listings in universal search?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
Drop in google referral traffic
Hi guys, As we know, GA shows google as traffic source in two ways: google / organic for organic searches and google.TLD / referral for everything else: google groups, base.google.com, static pages, google reader, google image search, google search appliance/mini. What we noticed is that around Oct 20th there's a huge drop of google.TLD / referral traffic to our site. Do you experience something similar? I couldn't find anything Google-related that happened around this specific date. We use GSA for our site search and I'm wondering if this could be the reason - maybe someone from our development team made changes to GSA settings that affected this traffic source. Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | lgrozeva0 -
Multiple Domain Tracking with One Google Analytics Account
I am working on multiple online retail stores as follow. Right now, I have tracking facility with multiple account. Attached image can give you more idea about it. http://www.vistastores.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | CommercePundit
http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/
http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/ I don't want to track my statistics with multiple account. Because, it may take too much time behind Goal set up as well as analysis. Can I track all data under one account for all online retail stores? 6464019053_bda32e9fe0_b.jpg0