Semalt: 3 Easy Methods To Remove Spam Traffic From Google Analytics

23.05.2018

Semalt: 3 Easy Methods To Remove Spam Tra c From Google Analytics

If you recently checked your Google Analytics traf c and observed the high bump, the chances are that your site is receiving false traf c. Sometimes you have to set up a new website, work on the latest designs and spent plenty of time on checking the quality of posts you write. As you begin your research about the traf c sources, you will nd the robots and spiders everywhere. You may also nd referral websites such as ransonic or darodar and will notice that the bounce rate is extremely high. In addition, a user will spend only a few seconds on your website as he/she is not interested in your content or services.

Depending on the types of visitors you receive (referral spam, spiders, robots, crawler spam and ghost spam), you can clean up the traf c with the following techniques provided by Ross Barber, a top expert from Semalt.

Method#1: Create Multiple Referral Spam Segments You can create the referral spam segments to eliminate the spiders and bots. Using fake referrers, the referral and ghost spam bombard your websites with low-quality traf c. The referral spam is never interested in your website and tries to trick your Google Analytics data. With this method, the referral spam generates fake impressions on your website and hopes that his products and services will be liked on the internet.

When it comes to creating the referral exclusion lists, the referral spam will show up as direct traf c. https://rankexperience.com/articles/article1776.html

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This direct traf c will in ate the numbers of your website, and the only lter that can prevent this type of traf c is a customized lter. To create referral spam segments, you should go to the Audience > Technology > Network section and select the Hostname as your main dimension. You can export your data into Excel for more research. Check the users with different visits and high bounce rate throughout the day, and notice their behavior. This method cannot work if the bots and spiders don't declare who they are via the agent string.

Method#2: Use Google Analytics' Robot/Spider Tool You can get rid of fake traf c using Google Analytics' robot tool. The rst step is to check the pre-made lters of Google. The pre-made lter is often named as "Exclude Hits from the Known Spiders and Bots." Go to the Admin section and exclude the hits from known spiders and bots. If you don't know anything about the robots, bots, and spiders, you can create lters to prevent them from damaging your content and website. Some robots and spiders are good for your site because they index your pages without activating the analytics tag, such as the Google Analytics pageview. And some spiders crawl websites for the malicious purposes. You can see both useful and harmful spiders and bots in your Google Analytics account.

Most often, they are bad for your site and can create a mess. Also, they will in ate the web analytics traf c. That's why you should click on the Bot Filtering option in the Google Analytics account to prevent the bad bots from showing up in the data. When your results pop up, you can see a huge list of hostnames. Take this list export into the Excel. Make sure you have marked the hostnames that have copied your content with the "y" term. Some hostnames can be recognized as big brands and famous companies, but it is actually ghost spam. Taking the "y" list, you can create custom segments and include the hostnames to those segments.

Method#3: Eliminate the Crawler Spam with .htaccess File: Another thing you can do is to eliminate the spam by editing the .htaccess le. We don't recommend this method because of its multiple disadvantages, so you should proceed carefully and do not edit the .htaccess le until you have an idea of what to do. First of all, you should identify the domain from where the spiders and bots are coming.

You are free to use this technique to nd the lists of domains. The code that should be used in the .htaccess le is: RewriteEngine on Options +FollowSymlinks (Note: If you are using ISS or Apache, you don't need to include this line.)

RewriteCond [NC,OR]

%{HTTP_REFERER}

^http://.*domainnamehere.gtldhere

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]

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