Google Analytics is a free tool that is used by webmasters to track down the referral URL’s of visitors that land on their website. Sadly spammers use this chance to boost their own website or may use it to destruct the image of other websites by adding their domain name as Referrer in the URL’s Google analytic data. Mainly there are two spams that can use this functionality they are Crawler and Ghost spam.
How to remove the spam – A filter does a brief about Crawler spam and how to filter it out:
This type of spam is totally different from Ghost spam, because it does access your site. Crawler spam works through hordes of spam bots that crawls over your pages. When they exit from your site they leave a record on your reports that look very similar to a legitimate site visit. Crawlers are hard to identify since it uses a valid hostname so you will require a dGo to the Adminifferent filter with an expression.
How to remove the spam – A filter does the trick:
- Go to the Admin tab
- Under the View column and click
- Enter Crawler Spam as name
- Filter Type> Custom >Exclude
- Filter Fields > Campaign Source
- Filter Pattern > Paste the crawler spam expression [You can also create your own expression similar to the valid hostage expression]
- Click Verify this Filter to have quick glance on how the filter works. You will see a referral spam on the left side of the preview table
- Once the Filter is working fine Save the filter
A brief about Ghost spam and how to filter it out: These spammers normally do not visits your site instead uses the measurement protocol to track the data and add destructive or fake data to your website leaving behind without any trace. A filter does the trick:
To set up the filter just follow the below steps:
- Navigate to the reporting section, select a time frame on the calendar and go to the Audience tab
- Expand Technology and select Network
- Make sure you click on the Hostname right on the top line of the report [by default the service provider is selected] Now this will give you the
- complete list of all Host names that you come across [real and fake ones] Make the most use of these tips to reap maximum benefits from your website and to safeguard your website from hackers.