Blocking non-U.S. traffic to fight referral spam?
-
I've been thinking about ways to deal with referral spam in Google Analytics. From what I can tell, most if not all of this is coming from outside the U.S. I'd love any insight into the following questions related to this issue:
For U.S. based local businesses, I'm wondering if we should just block all traffic from outside of the U.S. -would there be negative SEO factors if we use this approach?
Would it be better to just create GA segments to filter out this traffic, rather than actually blocking it?
Has anyone found success in using filters or segments in this way?
Is anyone seeing referral spam from within the U.S.?
Edit: I just came across this suggestion, that setting 2 filters (for invalid hostname and screen resolution) can solve most of the issue. Any insight on this alternative vs. my ideas above?? https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
-
Hi Toby, if you mean that if this traffic has an influence on search ranking, it doesn't, in fact, google doesn't use any data from Google Analytics as a ranking factor. Here is an explanation from Matt Cutts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU
And if you think about it, it makes sense since even a lot of people uses GA not everyone does so it wouldn't be fair.
-
-
Hi Ira,
Including only traffic from USA will stop many of the spammers but many will continue hitting you, as you can see in the screenshot I attached. I recommend you to try the solution a filter based on your hostnames.
This solution requires a little more time to set up, but it has **3 huge advantages, **and you won't have to exclude all the world except USA.
- You will stop the spam before it hits you, adding a filter for the referral after you see it will stop it, but by the time you apply it you will have already hits of the spam.
- You will need only ONE filter to stop all ghost spam, instead of creating various sets of filters.
- Lately, some of the spammers(e.g. free-social-buttons) have been hitting GA accounts with fake direct visits along with the referral, the filter for the referral won’t stop the direct visit, on the other hand. The Valid hostname filter will stop ALL ghost spam in any form whether it shows as a referral, keyword or direct visit.
This is what I've been using on my accounts for the last moths and I haven't received a single hit of ghost spam. Combining the valid hostname filter with a Campaign Source filter you will control the spam. Here is a detailed guide and more information about these solutions.
-
http://www.ohow.co/what-is-referrer-spam-how-stop-it-guide/
Hope it helps,
-
-
I have often wondered, does Google count these referrals as true traffic?
-
I'll let people with more accounts chime in on the management. I'm using this on just a couple of accounts right now, and keep an eye on my refers to see if anything new pops up.
-
Thanks Keri. How often do you you update things? Given that my company manages dozens of GA accounts, this can get pretty time consuming.
Is there any real benefit to filtering the traffic out vs. just using segments to keep it out of reports? With segments, all that is needed is to keep a custom segment updated that can be shared across all GA accounts, so I'm thinking that would be a lot more efficient.
-
I block based on hostname, and that's worked for me. There's a good post at http://www.analyticsedge.com/2014/12/removing-referral-spam-google-analytics/ with several options.
Edited to add: always keep a profile that has NO filters or anything else, just in case you accidentally end up blocking valid data.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's the best approach to deleting a location page ?
We have several locations that moved to be under a parent location. Should I do a 404 redirect or a 301 redirect to parent page where they can find information about the location they are searching for.
Local SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Does having 3 city's in my Title Tag help or hurt me?
Hello!! I have a health insurance agency located in a small city. I need to reach more area's, and I'm wondering if adding a couple more cities to the Title Tag actually helps? Or should I go the other route and try achieving it with location landing pages? I've seen other websites do it, but I'm hesitant. Any advice welcome 🙂 The site is http://wilkersoninsuranceagency.com/ in Coppell, Tx It currently ranks 3rd on Google. Thank you in advance!! 🙂 xx
Local SEO | | MissThumann0 -
To Keep My Company's CO.UK Page Or Redirect It...
Hi Moz'ers - I have a question... Just to set the stage, we're a small recruiting firm, with an even smaller marketing department. I'm essentially a one man wrecking crew and don't have a ton of extra time. That being said, I know that page rank (and local office rank) are critical to our inbound lead generation, so I'm willing to invest some of my time into doing it right. The issue I'm having is ranking high as a local business in Austin, New York, San Francisco, and London, UK (to name a few). So far I've solved this through building dedicated subpages on our .com site and link building key word anchor text towards those pages. The only page that's not really gaining traction is our London page. So I decided to clone (most of) the site, tweak the text (to try and avoid dup text), and try and get that page to rank. I'm also having it hosted on a local server, have it using a local domain address suffix (co.uk), using local hreflang (on our .com site), created dedicated web 2.0 sites, and done my best to do some link building. The problem I'm facing is crapy local ranking, and limited bandwidth to maintain two sites. Should I: A) Scrap the co.uk site and focus on the .com (and subpages)
Local SEO | | bettsrecruiting
B) Keep the co.uk domain, and just redirect the URL to our .com page
C) Keep the co.uk domain, send all links from the home page to the relevant page on our .com page, and set up 301 redirects for all other relevant pages.
D) Hire someone to clean up, rewrite, and upkeep the co.uk site because it has the most SEO value in the long run and is the only way I'm going to be able to rank locally in London. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim Our European Site - http://bettsrecruiting.co.uk/
Our US Site - http://bettsrecruiting.com/0 -
Community Discussion: Miriam's 2017 Local SEO Predictions ... And Yours?
I want to start this thread by thanking everyone in our community who has started and contributed to great threads this past year. You guys are an inspiration! I want to offer up a few predictions for the Local SEO industry in 2017 and ask you to contribute your own: Attribution will be big in 2017. Google will roll out a more thorough set of attributes in the GMB dashboard as we move forward through the new year. We'll see further rollout out of paid packs in service industries in which Google can play the middle man role. Free-packs won't be gone by the end of the year, but there will be fewer of them. Even SMB local businesses will have to start to tackle the ramifications of voice search. Local SEO will continue to merge with traditional, offline marketing. Local business websites will still matter, but Google will continue to do all it can to keep users within layers of its own local product, and some people will find this maze a bit bewildering. Reviews will finally be recognized as an integral facet of citations, rather than as something separate from them. Now, please, look into your own crystal ball and share your predictions with the community. What are your predictions for Local SEO in 2017? I'd love to know. And, while I'm at it, please let me wish each of you a busy and profitable new year in our exciting industry!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis4 -
Google cache is showing the wrong URL with CCTLD's
Hi Folks, At Lightspeed we decided to setup local websites with CCtld's. Momentarily we have issues with the Google cache. I'm not sure what's going wrong. For example if I check the Google cache of www.lightspeedhq.be in the Belgium Google it refers to www.lightspeedhq.nl. See link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fm0XIZ8sEe8J:https://www.lightspeedhq.be/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be We have the same problem for our www.lightspeedhq.co.uk website, which is referring to www.lightspeedhq.com: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OXdAIIFa7AYJ:https://www.lightspeedhq.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Does Google sees it as duplicate content? Or don't we have to use 'Alternative Hreflang'? A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com. What can we do now to make sure all is properly indexed? Best, Ruud
Local SEO | | Ruudst0 -
Google's Geo Search Setting Gone Cuckoo!
Hey Everybody! I thought I'd post about this because pretty much all of our members who do Local SEO are bound to run into this. Last week, when I was in the middle of training someone, I ran into something bizarre. Using Google's search settings to set my location to a remote locale, the local packs were returning me results for the correct city, but the organic results accompanying the pack were showing me results that appeared to be based on my own IP address instead ... in other words, Google was overriding my designated geolocation in favor of where it knows I'm actually located. I was relieved to see Mike Blumenthal post on this (helped me realize I wasn't going crazy - haha) and I recommend that everyone who does Local for a living take a look: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/05/24/google-location-results-still-screwy/ I also recommend checking out this G+ convo going on between John Mueller and others: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerrySimmonds/posts/1BZ6guvy9mE John's initial thought was that nothing has changed ... but something has definitely changed. Do some of your own searches and see what you come up with. Main takeaway here is that if you are trying to approximate clients' rankings in cities not your own, the results you are seeing may be very weird right now. Not sure if this is a temporary glitch or the forerunner to some change coming our way. This is a story to stay on top of, for sure. What do you you all see?
Local SEO | | Moz.HelpTeam0 -
Facebook ad to drive traffic to weight loss newsletter landing page - tips
Hello, I'm making a facebook ad to go to this page. Criteria: Lives in Boise Idaho, likes weight loss, diet tips, etc. 35-55 yrs old, women What tips do you have? Thanks.
Local SEO | | BobGW0 -
Google's rel=publisher tag question
Hi, i have a question about the use of rel=publisher tag on a large retail website with multiple local stores. There is 1 e-commerce website where i want to put the rel publisher tag from the main Google + businesspage. There are also 60 local google+businesspages, And on the main website every store has his own store-page. Is it good to put on all the 60 storepages their own rel=publishertag connected with the localbusinesspages on google? Or should i Stick at the main rel=publisher tag connected with the main google+page? Thanx, Leonie
Local SEO | | Leonie-Kramer0