Google Analytics referral spam has long been a pain point for Google Analytics users. While Google had previously promised a solution last year, until now, users had to resort to many workarounds in an attempt to sanitize Analytics from showing all the spam. But as of this weekend, many people were reporting that Google Analytics referral spam is no longer showing up in reporting.
The change does not appear to be retroactive, as I do see referral spam still in Google Analytics in January. But as of February, it seems that Google has finally solved the Google Analytics spam problem, as it appears no referral spam shows up – at least none of the commonly known ones.
It does still seem to show referral spam in the real time view. So it appears Google Analytics is somehow applying a filter after the fact to remove those referral spam URLs before it hits the acquisition reporting.
But for that particular referral that shows up for a ton of SEO industry sites, the last time it shows up in acquisition logs in Google Analytics is mid-January.
Referral spam gains traffic by hoping that site owners will click through on those referral sites in order to see what it was that brought visitors to the site. While no links – or real traffic – came from these sites, they could still see traffic from webmasters who checked. And Google Analytics wasn’t previously able to tell that it was referral spam and not a real person.
This means that for the month of February, site owners will be able to analyze their logs without all the referral spam skewing the data. But it could also seem that traffic dropped once the referral spam is gone… but since this is not real traffic, it isn’t a true loss.
This is amazing news for webmasters who have been annoyed by continually having to filter out all the spam. Now we will see if referral spammers figure out how to beat the new filter.
Jennifer Slegg
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Mike Sullivan says
I have been closely monitoring Google Analytics spam sources since Dec 2014, and can confirm that Google closed the door on most of the fake traffic at the end of January, BUT some of it still gets through for a day or two.
There were at least 14 confirmed mutli-account spammers appearing during February, and one so far in March, but their traffic amounted to just a handful of session appearances per account. Google is obviously fine-tuning their processes, and that is a very welcome sight!
Guy Hoogewerf says
All very well for Google to filter out the Traffic, but some Spam does hit our websites and that causes Load, now we just don’t know it is happening that is all… it’s hidden. Much better is to continue to track down and put these Spam sites out of action once and for all… Semalt we’re after you!
Appernetic.io says
Probably the two core algo updates Google did in January.
Holly Powell says
This is good news! It’s been a nightmare trying to stay on top of all the new referral spam links that show up on a regular basis. I’ll have to look at an account where we didn’t set up filters and track it. Wondering should I remove the filters we have already setup? Any thoughts on this?
Jennifer Slegg says
It probably doesn’t hurt to leave them.
Patrick Garrett says
Hello Jennifer- I found this article timely when I was researching a similar subject last month. I just examined a specific client again where I saw the decrease in SPAM filters earlier in the month – and they’re BACK!! And on the rise!
Have you seen any similar patterns? I realize this article is 3 weeks old now, but felt this was a good place to leave mention. Thanks!
Randy Fougere says
Noticed the same thing here. I used to have 4-8 big offenders, now I have less of them and dozens of single page visits from derivatives. Back to filtering again I guess 🙁
Cheers,
Randy
Cathie says
This is great news. I was really tired of filtering out spam from clients’ analytics accounts. I still see some spam but not nearly the same amount. It is the kind of traffic I’m glad to see gone.
Katherine says
I’m seeing the same thing — referral spam is back in my April, 2016 reporting. And the previous filters I was using seem to not be blocking it now, either. Any updates on this from Google?
Nathan Davidson says
I’m with Patrick and Randy – the spam bots strike back! New ones as yet unfiltered all over my clients sites again – back to filtering them out every month, groan.