How to identify & exclude spam traffic from Google Analytics

How to Exclude Spam

Spam traffic usually arrives with a specific ‘Referrer’, ‘Page’ or something else that helps identify it.

To help exclude these, you can use the following:

• Filters – to stop Google Analytics from collecting the data
• Segments – to help you seen if your property has been affected without having to filter each report
• Channel Groupings – to categorise the data as spam, and not have it impact data from a particular channel.

Spammers often change tactics and new spams come out all the time so you may need to add to these filters over time!

bot-traffic.xyz

There are lots of spam creators out there, this is specific to the Spammer bot-traffic.xyz – if you want advice on how to exclude wider spam reach out and we can help you with that! Just get in touch.

The first thing you need to remember is to NOT VISIT bot-traffic.xyz! The goal of the spammers is exactly that – to get you to visit the URL in question and then purchase services or products from them, same as e-mail spam. In some cases, there might be malware on the page that could harm your computer.

This spam traffic is going to affect reports and could impact your marketing decisions, so excluding the data completely is a good aim, if you already have traffic then you may want to exclude it using a segment or custom channel grouping.

How to Exclude Spam

Spam traffic usually arrives with a specific ‘Referrer’, ‘Page’ or something else that helps identify it.

To help exclude these, you can use the following:

• Filters – to stop Google Analytics from collecting the data
• Segments – to help you seen if your property has been affected without having to filter each report
• Channel Groupings – to categorise the data as spam, and not have it impact data from a particular channel.

Spammers often change tactics and new spams come out all the time so you may need to add to these filters over time!

Using segments in Google Analytics

Segments are a super useful way to help you find if you are affected and to exclude any data so you can use most reports in Google Analytics.

How to see if you are affected

Click here to import 2 segments
The link will open a page where you can:
Select which segments to import
Which profiles to import then too
The 2 segments are:

Check /bot-traffic.xyz – See if you have any traffic from bot-traffic.xyz

Exclude /bot-traffic.xyz – Exclude bot-traffic.xyz from dashboard

If you use Check /bot-traffic.xyz and there is traffic, you have been a victim of Spam. If you are on the Channel report with this segment you will be able to see that this tends to affect Organic traffic (but you can check this).

If you know you have been affected by this spam you can then use Exclude /bot-traffic.xyz to exclude this Spam traffic

If you have already been affected, make sure to exclude this in any reports you make too (segments can be used by reporting tools like Data Studio).

How to add a filter

Open Analytics
Go to a property
Go to Admin
Select a View
Then you can add your filters, below are two filters to exclude bot-traffic.xyz and anything that uses www.sleepinggiantmedia.co.uk as the domain.

Filter 1 – Exclude bot-traffic.xyz pages

+ Filter
Name It Exclude Spam bot-traffic.xyz
Custom
Exclude (make sure you select EXCLUDE)
Request URI
Filter Pattern:
a. bot-traffic.xyz
Click Verify this filter
Save

Filter 2 – SGM Host

+ Filter
Name it something like – Exclude Spam – SGM Host
Custom
Exclude (make sure you select EXCLUDE)
Hostname
Filter Patter:
a.*www.sleepinggiantmedia.co.uk
Click Verify this filter
a.This will show you what would be changed based on the last 7 days. Make sure this will not exclude anything unexpected.
Save
You can now apply these to other views – If you apply filters at an Account level you can select any of your views in that account and add in bulk… remember to keep your Raw view unfiltered.

Repeat for any other accounts.

Using segments in Google Analytics

Segments are a super useful way to help you find if you are affected and to exclude any data so you can use most reports in Google Analytics.

How to see if you are affected

Click here to import 2 segments
The link will open a page where you can:
Select which segments to import
Which profiles to import then too
The 2 segments are:

Check /bot-traffic.xyz – See if you have any traffic from bot-traffic.xyz

Exclude /bot-traffic.xyz – Exclude bot-traffic.xyz from dashboard

If you use Check /bot-traffic.xyz and there is traffic, you have been a victim of Spam. If you are on the Channel report with this segment you will be able to see that this tends to affect Organic traffic (but you can check this).

If you know you have been affected by this spam you can then use Exclude /bot-traffic.xyz to exclude this Spam traffic

If you have already been affected, make sure to exclude this in any reports you make too (segments can be used by reporting tools like Data Studio).