Hello Rosemary,

Couple of things to check in GA under view settings under admin make sure Bot filtering is checked. Also under the menu in filtering you can add and IP exclusion list (from other office locations for example). Further you can add websites that you do not want referral traffic to be recording from this can be done under property/tracking info/ referral exclusion list

Argumentum ad populum - Latin for "appeal to the people". It is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or most people believe it.

"Brand X vacuum cleaners are the country's leading brand; so buy Brand X vacuum cleaners."

You may be missing the point of online recomendations. It's to increase referral traffic. Buying likes and +1's will most likely be done by a spam farm and nobody hears their screams.

Also, Google+ is a Google product, and you can bet they'll be able to spot the 'user farms' that may spring up due to the popularity of '+1 buying'.

If content is worth sharing, then users will share. If not, then might be worth trying to figure out what sort of content users will share.

In my opinion, this is not a safe, nor reliable, SEO practice.

You may be missing the point of online recomendations. It's to increase referral traffic. Buying likes and +1's will most likely be done by a spam farm and nobody hears their screams.

Also, Google+ is a Google product, and you can bet they'll be able to spot the 'user farms' that may spring up due to the popularity of '+1 buying'.

If content is worth sharing, then users will share. If not, then might be worth trying to figure out what sort of content users will share.

In my opinion, this is not a safe, nor reliable, SEO practice.