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
-
Google analytics suddenly stopped tracking all my landing pages
Hey guys. I love the new update of GA. Looks so clean. So, of course, I was excited to see how my landing pages were doing. I went to behavior, all content, all pages. And I noticed it's only showing me 19 pages out of the 93 I have indexed. And none of the top ones at all! Can't find them anywhere in GA! Anyone seen this before? Thank you so much
Reporting & Analytics | | Meier0 -
Google Analytics Question - Impressions & Queries Up, Sessions Down
I'm working with a client who, according to the Google Query report, impressions and sessions are up since we've started work with them about 6 months ago, but Google sessions are down. In moz, we're seeing a gradual, but steady increase in search visibility specifically with Google. Note: this is all organic. From when we started tracking queries, the first month we were tracking there were 43,581 impressions and 690 click throughs for the month. This past month there were 98,293 queries and 1015 clicks throughs for the month (granted not year over year data) - of these 1,015 clicks, 995 of them were from web. However, for those same time periods, sessions from Google are down over 30% - 1,750 vs. 1,189. I'm not sure how to interpret this. I realize that clicks and sessions are not a straightforward comparison, but I would think that if clicks were up according to the query report that sessions would also be up. Is it that some of these clicks are bouncing and therefore not being tracked as a session? Is there a potential issue with how data is being tracked?
Reporting & Analytics | | Corporate_Communications0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
How can I track my rankings on Google Images?
I noticed a small amount of traffic coming from a particular very generic keyword. Being pleasantly surprised that we are ranking for this, and after some digging, I found that we are actually ranking in Google images, rather than in the web results. How can I track whether other keywords are ranking in Google images? I use Rank Checker to track keywords in the main web results, but this doesn't have a function for Google Images. Help please - thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd0 -
Google Analytics shows most referrers as "Direct" -- What are some better tools?
Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful. Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic? Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.) Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Brand_Psychic0 -
Whats 'Other' in Google Analytics (in Acquisition)
When i look in GA under Channels (under Acquisition) 'other' is listed What is 'other' ? I have been told its other unidentified channels as they did not allow 3rd party cookies or surfers were in anonymous/private mode. Other is usually organic traffic that couldn't be identified for the aformentioned reasons. This data is encrypted and available but it violates Google guidelines as they are not allowed to pass personal info//data to third parties so it is automatically filtered. But they are not 'Not Provided' (since that still shows under organic) but is usually/mainly some form of organic visits. Hence Seo can take credit for much of that traffic, is this correct ? Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How to identify rising keywords in analytics?
Hi Guys I just spotted in the Google Analytics > Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries section a keyword that on the 27th Feb went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day. This was down to people searching for a newly launched product. Does anyone know how I can identify any increases like this easily? I only came across this by accident, and I am 1 month behind the times. It would have been ideal to pick this up closer to the time so I could capitalise and write some great content on the topic. Thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
No Social Sources in Google Analytics - what am I doing wrong?
Hello Everyone, I'm having a strange issue: I DO NOT have in my Google Analytics the "Social" tab under the Traffic Sources category. Look at the first image of this post: http://marketingland.com/google-analytics-social-reports-8138 How do you "get" that to show? Hope somebody has this issue and can help, Thanks a lot, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0