SEOMoz crawls skewing Avg Visit Duration in Google Analytics

[STL]

Hello,

We are a UK based company.

Our Google Analytics account is showing a rise in Avg Visit Duration for 'Direct traffic' since we started using SEOMoz.

Are any other users experiencing this issue?

We tracked it down to City Seattle, and when doing an Advanced filter by removing Seattle, the results are normal again.

What does SEOMoz or other users recommend we do besides continuously using advanced filters?

We have enquired about excluding Roger's IP address, but have been told that Roger uses the Amazon cloud, so the IP is not static.

See attachment for screenshot of our Google Analytics account of Avg Visit Duration since we began with SEOMoz.

Rich Talbot

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[STL]

Thanks Nick, but that article doesn't seem to be about blocking Rogerbot, as Rogerbot seems to use 'Mozilla' equivalent as its browser value (from what I can tell).

After I posted the original question, I experimented with GA filtering, and managed to block City:Seattle. This is probably of not much use to USA websites as Seattle may count for a large chunk of traffic, however as we are based in UK it won't make much difference, and at least won't skew our Avg Time on Site results.

Rich

[Nick_Sayers]

Hey there,

The Seattle traffic block looks like a good way to block rogerbot. I found this guide on how you can block rogerbot in your GA filtering. http://blog.yottaa.com/2011/03/google-analytics-how-to-segment-and-filter-out-robot-traffic

Give that a try and see if it works.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Thanks for the info. very interesting.

Sounds draconian but cant you identify and block out a block of IP's that would be used by Amazon?