Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Whatstuffwherebot user agent messing up Google Analytics
-
Starting yesterday, Aug 26, 2020, I noticed a new bot crawling our site with user agent whatstuffwherebot.
Google Analytics is counting these hits as human traffic, completely throwing off my numbers - yesterday, Analytics reported nearly triple my typical number of visitors.
As of now, Search Console only shows data through Aug 25 so I don't know if Search Console is also affected.
Is anybody else seeing something similar?
Does anybody know what the whatstuffwherebot bot is? I don't get any results when I search on Google or Bing.
For what it's worth, the traffic is coming from Columbus, OH, running over Amazon AWS via 278 different IP addresses so far. Also, WordFence (my WordPress security plugin) correctly identifies these hits as bot traffic.
-
Hi Martijn,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I've enabled bot filtering on all views except my unfiltered view. My site gets so much bot traffic that the data would be unusable without it.
As for filtering the traffic, I'm not aware of any way to retroactively filter out User-Agent unless I use GTM to create a custom dimension as described here: https://www.addsearch.com/docs/analytics/addsearch-bot-google-analytics/
Perhaps this is something I should do in case something like this ever happens again in the future.
I'm still hoping for other suggestions - particularly ways to ask the Google Analytics team to include "whatstuffwherebot" as part of their bot filtering.Best,
Akira -
Hi Akira,
Have you enabled bot filtering as a setting in Google Analytics on a view level? If not, you could always add a filter on the property or account level to filter out the traffic if it has very common patterns as you're describing. Usually, I would just stay away, from filtering out this type of traffic though if you have large amounts of traffic as otherwise you might be doing more harm to your data long-term than helping it.
Martijn.
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 is Local SEO in Google Analytics (Organic Source)
Recently, I saw "Local SEO" is mentioned as the organic source. Can someone please tell what is this and from where Google is fetching data for this source?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin.Monks0 -
Google Analytics reporting traffic for 404 pages
Hi guys, Unique issue with google analytics reporting for one of our sites. GA is reporting sessions for 404 pages (landing pages, organic traffic) e.g. for this page: http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php the page is currently a 404 page but GA (see screenshot) is reporting organic traffic (to the landing page). Does anyone know any reasons why this is happening? Cheers. http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php GK0zDzj.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright2 -
No-indexed pages are still showing up as landing pages in Google Analytics
Hello, My website is a local job board. I de-indexed all of the job listing pages on my site (anything that starts with http://www.localwisejobs.com/job/). When I search site:localwisejobs.com/job/, nothing shows up. So I think that means the pages are not being indexed. When I look in Google Analytics at Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, none of the job listing pages show up. But when I look at Acquisition > Channels > Organic and then click Landing Page as the primary dimension, the /job pages show up in there. Why am I seeing this discrepency in Organic Landing pages? And why would the /job pages be showing up as landing pages even though they aren't indexed?
Reporting & Analytics | | mztobias0 -
Google Analytics Showing Inflated Product Revenue
Hi- For the month of Feb on two of our sites we are seeing inflated product revenues. I have not seen this before and I am not having any luck searching for answers. Here is the issue: Product B sells for $159.95 For the month of Feb we sold 3 thus revenue should be ~$479.85 GA is showing Product B's revenue at $3,360.00 I read online that sometimes folks will bookmark the receipt page and that can cause this and we would need to put a catch in place for this but I am guessing this is not the case as it is happening on two sites. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Google Analytics and DNS change
Our new alumni application is going be tested at domain uva.imodules.com . We are going to collect traffic data with a Google analytics account number UA-884652-XX. So going to uva.imodules.com/myPage.html would send its data to Google Analytics with that account number. Then when it is ready for production we are going to just change the domain name of the application and switch the DNS over to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu . So going to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu /myPage.html would send its data to Google Analtics with that SAME account number. Aside from having the testing domain data in the same profile are there any other issues/problems we may run into?
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
Google Analytics for multiple languages on multiple domains
Hi folks A quick question in regards to setting up Google Analytics for a website with multiple languages on multiple domains. The domains that needs to be tracked are: www.example.com -> English www.example.se -> Swedish www.example.dk -> Danish To my best knowledge this can be acheived in Google Analytids using 3 different setups: Different accounts Different properties Profiles What would you guys consider the best approach?
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify
Pros and cons? Have a great day Fredrik0 -
How can I verify if someone is Google Analytics certified?
I am looking to hire an IC to help with analytics. I need to know how I can verify if they are GA certified. They gave me a link to a http://www.starttest.com profile. Is that legit?
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseseo0 -
Google Analytics Admin account not allowing us to add other users?
Our Google Analytics Administrator account is not giving us access to the User Manager, and because of that we are unable to add users; have you ever ran in to a problem such as this, if so what was your solution. Thanks a Billion impressions, Vijay E2qE9.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | vijayvasu0