Why doesn't Google seem to care about referral spam?
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In researching the issue of referral spam, there is no shortage if info, both on MOZ and beyond. But, neither the Google Analytics Blog or Help Forums seem to mention the issue at all. I'd think it is something that they would want to get rid of, yet it seems like they don't even acknowledge that it exists.
Anyone have insights into this? Am I missing something, or is Google strangely silent on an issue that is becoming more and more annoying for anyone trying to use GA data?
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I am just guessing, but here is my guess. I think that this actually took Google by surprise. I bet they didn't even consider it when they made GA. So I can see them trying to rush out a system where a property ID has to be on a site that it is registered to or something of that nature. But I bet them not mentioning it is not them dismissing it, it is more of them mentioning the issue when they have a fix for it. That seems to be their typical fashion.
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I have to agree with you Ira, these referral spams keep on throwing my GA and MOZ data off and really frustrating, and so far no real solution. I saw a few website recommending to block the websites in .htaccess or filtering the data in GA. Needless to say, none of the options are really good since there are hundreds of different spam domains. I was also really surprised that Google hasn't really taken any actions against this problem, probably motivating furthermore these spam "attacks".
I'm interested if these spam attacks affect the rankings since most of them have 95-100% bounce of rate, so google might think that your website doesn't have the best quality...
Adam
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I'm also perplexed. You'd think they'd eliminate some of the more well-known culprits.
They do offer the "referral exclusion" tool, which I'm sure you're aware of. If not, it's in Analytics under the Tracking Info menu.
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