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
-
Keywords are indexed on the home page
Hello everyone, For one of our websites, we have optimized for many keywords. However, it seems that every keyword is indexed on the home page, and thus not ranked properly. This occurs only on one of our many websites. I am wondering if anyone knows the cause of this issue, and how to solve it. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Ginovdw1 -
Optimal use of keywords in header tag
what does optimal use of keywords in header tag actually mean given you indicate this as hurting seo factor?
Technical SEO | | Serg1550 -
How to show number of products in your Google SERP?
I have used to rich snippet to my website & everything is working fine except showing the total number of products listed in the particular category. Check out the screenshot below: aH7XM
Technical SEO | | promodirect0 -
Screaming Frog showing 503 status code. Why?
Screaming Frog is showing a 503 code for images. If I go and use a header checker like SEOBook it shows 200. Why would that be? Here is an example link- http://germanhausbarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/36-UPC-5145536-John-Deere-Stoneware-Logo-Mug-pair-25.00-Heavy-4-mugs-470x483.jpg
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
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 pages still showing in SERPs, despite being NOINDEXed for months?
We have thousands of pages we're trying to have de-indexed in Google for months now. They've all got . But they simply will not go away in the SERPs. Here is just one example.... http://bitly.com/VutCFiIf you search this URL in Google, you will see that it is indexed, yet it's had for many months. This is just one example for thousands of pages, that will not get de-indexed. Am I missing something here? Does it have to do with using content="none" instead of content="noindex, follow"? Any help is very much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MadeLoud0 -
Does a TM in the keyword have effect?
If I include TM in a keyword string, does this make it another keyword or does Google ignore that? Example: Kentucky Hot Sauce vs Kentucky Hot (TM) sauce. Of course the TM would be done properly via ™ Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?
Hi, I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally. Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ. Example: Normal visitor sees: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts Google and SEOMOZ see: About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work. Any help or explanation would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Function50