Google Analytics Referer Spam

Anyone seeing hackers in GA?

[smilie]

Hi guys,

Google Analytics Referer Spam - anyone's seeing referer spam? Various bots with several big site "referers" and a weird , hacked browser and language fields?

It is not only spamming GA, it is also now causing our main website to nosedive in Google SERPs. I am seeing 99%+ bounce rate from these bots, and naturally Google doesn't seem to see it.

[smilie]

Looks like bot is hitting home page of our site from an evenly distributed pool of US IPs, with browser pretending to be Internet Explorer.

They are executing on-page javascript to trigger Google Analytics into having spam in it and leave.

There are various fields in Browser that spammers use. They also advertise a number of their own sites on domains such as .xyz.

Started late November and continued in December. I am still seeing periodic hits.

The effect.
Looks like Google is being triggered to think that website has a very high bounce rate and they demote it.

[robzilla]

There are several threads about this in the Analytics forum, like this one [webmasterworld.com] and this one [webmasterworld.com]. You can filter out the spam with several techniques (described there). Note that most of these bots never actually visit your site; the fake hits go directly to the GA servers, using your Analytics ID.

The fact that this sort of thing can happen in Analytics is actually a good argument against the persistent myth that Google uses Analytics data for ranking webpages. You'll want to look elsewhere [webmasterworld.com] for the cause of that nosedive.

[smilie]

robzilla, thanks.

I'll read the update thread.

[vehMedia]

You will have to enable Filters that will bloc their referrer spam from happening.

[RickHaasteren]

Analytics Edge has a nice article about fighting Analytics spam: [help.analyticsedge.com...]

I'm still amazed that Google 'hasn't been able to fix this. Self driving cars and internet balloons: no problemo. But keeping Analytics clean is too hard...

[NickMNS]

@RickHaasteren this is easily fixed in analytics, you can set a filter to exclude all hostnames other than your own domain. Bingo, end of referral spam in GA.

If any thing Google could set this filter as the default, and then for those that need more specifics could un-set the fitler.

[lucy24]

you can set a filter to exclude all hostnames other than your own domain

But, as the article points out, you have to make individual exclusions to fit your circumstances. The writer names shopping-cart hosts that are different from your own domain; I expect third-party discussion-thread utilities would be another exception.

But it was a good read. I hadn't realized that GA spammers simply leave out the hostname--yet another approach that would get them either blocked or forcibly redirected in real life. Note in particular the warning about NOT using the Referral Exclusion List.

[NickMNS]

@lucy24 I think you may have misread the article. It recommends exactly what I said in a much more detailed fashion. You need to filter based on hostname. What the article says is not to filter on is referral source.

[RickHaasteren]

Sure it is possible. But not easy for novice users, and it gets more complicated when you run multiple domains.

There's also an option to exclude all known robots in Analytics views. That doesn't work at all. So in my view, Google can improve big time.