![trafficbot . life trafficbot . life](https://harmonweb.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot_59.png)
Google's black-box doesn't always exclude the traffic you want to exclude. When this filter doesn't work, two things could be happening. I've used Google's auto filter on almost every account I've analyzed.Īnd I'd say 60% of the time it works all the time. To set up this filter, go to your view settings and check the box that says “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders.” The easiest way to keep bot traffic out of your Analytics reports is to use Google's automatic filter. So how do we keep this traffic out of our reports? The Google black-box solution
![trafficbot . life trafficbot . life](https://carloseo.com/wp-content/uploads/Google-Analytics-Working-in-a-Solution-for-the-Spam-768x405.png)
It's doubtful that Microsoft employs a bunch of people to sit around and click email links, and then immediately bounce off his site once they click through. Also, the traffic doesn't sound like it exhibits human behavior. Here' why: Keith is getting a disproportionate amount of location (not set) data in his reports. Keith wants to know if this is bot traffic? It is most likely bot traffic The geo-location for the majority of this traffic was “(not set).” And all the not set traffic is coming from one ISP organization – Microsoft Corporation.
![trafficbot . life trafficbot . life](https://harmonweb.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/bot_blog.jpg)
This happens from time to time.īut then something interesting happened. Here's Keith problem: His company sent out a targeted email campaign, and it resulted in a bunch of unwanted hits in their Google Analytics reports. Is this a case of a narrow target to Seattle for a number of individuals at Microsoft that happen to block geo location or perhaps something fishy with bot clicks from the email list provider to show results? (no accusations, just haven’t seen numbers like this Looking at a number of other sites we manage, we don’t have anywhere near the % of location (not set), even for Network/Service Provider: Microsoft Corporation. The email was targeted at Seattle and the Network/Service Provider dimension shows Microsoft Corporation. I have not seen such a high number of (not set), in fact we on another site we have we had 300 not set in the last 250,000 sessions. We received clicks to the site but no action once on the website and looking through GA I see that 82% of the clicks can be located to the United States but is (not set) for state, city & metro. The company is well known with a good reputation as far as we can tell. We recently sent an email blast out using an email list that we rented.
#Trafficbot . life how to#
And he wants to know how to respond to the problem. One of our Google Analytics Mastery Course students recently noticed a big issue with bot traffic in his reports. Google Analytics Mastery Course Student Question And let's walk through some strategies for blocking this traffic from our analytics reports.
![trafficbot . life trafficbot . life](https://carloseo.com/wp-content/uploads/Google-Analytics-Working-in-a-Solution-for-the-Spam.png)
Let's look at how we can identify bot traffic. You have to identify the unwanted website hits and respond. How do we identify the bot traffic within Google Analytics?ĭefending your data against bot traffic is a bit like playing whack-a-mole. Many varieties bots hit our websites, and sometimes we are the ones sending bots to our sites. There's been a noticeable reduction of spam traffic in our analytics reports.īut, spam is just one type of bot traffic that can pollute our analytics data. And since then things have gotten better. When users started threatening to move away from Google Analytics, Google took notice. Maybe the grass was greener somewhere else? Like many Google Analytics users, I started checking out other analytics products. Google was like Fredo in the Godfather II when it came to defending our data against spam – drastically underachieving!Īnd the community noticed. And for a long time, my take was that Google wasn't doing much to keep the spam traffic out of our analytics reports. Now, I've been pretty outspoken about how Google handles spam traffic. I love Google Analytics… But sometimes their “one size fits all” tool misses the mark. Google Analytics doesn't always block bot traffic In this post, you're going to learn how to: How do you keep the bots out of your Google Analytics reports? Heavy bot traffic (5% of sessions or more) can skew our data, pollute our analytics and ruin typically useful metrics like page value. Why? Because Bots are not real users, and they don't perform like humans. Whether or not you welcome this bot traffic, 99% of the time you don't want to see bot traffic in your analytics reports. Or at least bots that we want to visit our websites, for testing, diagnostics, and even monitoring SEO results. Sure, there are spam bots sending hits to our analytics data. We think of it as spam, and we don't want this data anywhere near our reports. Most of the time, bot traffic in our analytics data gets a bad name. Let's talk about bot traffic in Google Analytics.