{"id":210,"date":"2015-05-22T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lornas.wpengine.com\/?p=210"},"modified":"2015-05-22T08:00:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T15:00:52","slug":"what-is-that-crap-traffic-in-google-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lorennason.com\/2015\/05\/what-is-that-crap-traffic-in-google-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"What is that Crap Traffic in Google Analytics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been seeing some weird traffic coming in from spammy sites. I haven’t paid much attention to it until a client asked me about the same spam traffic they were also receiving.<\/p>\n

I started to dig.<\/p>\n

This type of traffic is called “Referrer Spam”<\/strong>. This is\u00a0traffic from bots (automated programs) that impersonate (fake it) a referral link (traffice) to your site. The bogus\u00a0traffic is designed to make their domain show up in your site analytics so that you\u2019ll visit their site.<\/p>\n

\"referral-spam-traffic\"<\/p>\n

Should you be concerned with this traffic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, it’s bogus traffic. But, it is a waste of bogus data in your analytics that you don’t want to see. Plus it can give you a false reading of your analytics.<\/p>\n

How do you stop this traffic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can’t really “stop” the traffic. Most of this “traffic” in your analytics is fake traffic that never got to your website.<\/p>\n

How do you stop “seeing” the traffic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead you need to filter the traffic from your analytics. There are a couple of plugins you can install and htaccess edits you can perform. But might not help. You may need to do a combination of tactics.<\/p>\n

Well then what should you do?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would start with a view level filter in Google Analytics. This post at Analytics Toolkit has\u00a0an explanation of how to do this.\u00a0http:\/\/blog.analytics-toolkit.com\/2015\/guide-referrer-spam-google-analytics\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m going to follow the above links instructions after 1 week of testing out the results the plugin below I use.<\/p>\n

WordPress Plugins:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m testing this one
\nGM Block Bots –\u00a0https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/gm-block-bots<\/a><\/p>\n

Block Referral Spam –\u00a0https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/wp-block-referral-spam<\/a><\/p>\n

Editing you htaccess file:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m not going to even go here as 99% of my readers won’t do this option. I won’t do this option either at this point as I think it will be too labor intensive. And goes back to the original problem being that the traffic is fake and isn’t actually hitting your website.<\/p>\n

Here is a GitHub link of spam blacklist sites if you want something for your htaccess file<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/github.com\/piwik\/referrer-spam-blacklist\/blob\/master\/spammers.txt<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is another link for removing\/filtering this problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.optimizesmart.com\/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been seeing some weird traffic coming in from spammy sites. I haven’t paid much attention to it until a client asked me about the same spam traffic they were also receiving. I started to dig. This type of traffic is called “Referrer Spam”. 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