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.
Direct traffic spam on Google Analytics: how can you identify and filter it?
-
One of my smaller clients noticed a huge jump in direct traffic visits last month. The bounce rate was around 97% so I'm pretty certain that most of the traffic was illegitimate. I know how to filter out spam referrals and organic keywords in Google Analytics. However I'm not sure what to do about direct traffic spam. Are there recommendations for filtering this out? Can I identify spam IP addresses?
-
Can you add a secondary dimension of medium and upload another screenshot? You will be able to cut out a large number of spam visits when you so that.
Essentially you will end up with hostname (not set) having medium of referral and medium of none.
Upload a screenshot and I may be in a better place to advise
-
I was looking for spam hostnames however a large volume of traffic coming to my clients website is from "not set" hostnames. I have feeling the (not set) hostname includes spammers. Do you know what else I can do about this?
-
Yep, hostname is where I would start looking as well. Also geographic segments like country and region if your site is targeting only a particular country/state/city.
And building on what Brett is saying, find a list of common nuisance bots and block them via robots.txt. That may help as well.
-
Hello Rosemary,
Couple of things to check in GA under view settings under admin make sure Bot filtering is checked. Also under the menu in filtering you can add and IP exclusion list (from other office locations for example). Further you can add websites that you do not want referral traffic to be recording from this can be done under property/tracking info/ referral exclusion list
-
Create a segment that only shows traffic to the hostname. (yoursite.com, youtube.com, paypal.com) That's it. It's pretty amazing how much traffic would appear to be spam.
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
-
Why is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?
A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P0 -
How to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view?
Hi, Need help on how to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view. I have been searching and the only information available is excluding IP address of internal traffic. Is there any way to exclude traffic through a mobile MAC address?
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadija_K0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
How do I manually add transactions to Google Analytics
We are seeing Google Analytic's drop transaction on our site so therefore all the figures are skewed. Is there a way I can manually add transactions to GA to cover the missing one?
Reporting & Analytics | | Towelsrus0 -
Google Analytic - Is it possible to see which organic keyword triggered goals?
Hi, I am trying to see which of my Google organic keywords triggered my goals? In GA I click > Conversion > Goals > Overview > Source Medium (This then says where my goals came from but when I click Google / Organic it just brings me to the overview page of my organic traffic). Is it possible to see which organic keywords trigger goals?
Reporting & Analytics | | AdvanceSystems0 -
Setting up Google Analytics default URL
If someone has set: the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com) then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website... ... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com). How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address? Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file? _Cindy
Reporting & Analytics | | CeCeBar0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0
