We recently wrote about a growing problem within Google Analytics reports, of significant amounts of visitor traffic from fake sources. These are often not even actual visitors, but are the result of outside manipulation that triggers Analytics to log and display a referral or visit. This spam/junk data totally skews the Analytics.
We are very pleased to report that we have developed a customized Google Analytics segment that, when applied to your Google Analytics account, will exclude most of the unwanted spam.
This segment will exclude data from well-known spam and junk sources. Please check these exclusions carefully, and make adjustments as needed. However, for most regular websites, this segment should work very well. Once you implement the segment, then view your traffic using All Sources (default) as well as this segment. You can compare the two and see a significant difference. Data should look a lot more realistic and meaningful. To check that everything is working well, you should ensure that conversions remain the same after segment implementation.
The segment looks for nasty sources by excluding traffic sources containing WORDS such as buttons and darodar. It also excludes data from junk hostnames including darodar.
Another issue is bad sources coming into Direct. This segment looks for Source / Medium containing (direct) / (none) where the Hostname is (not set). This should deflate your Direct traffic, getting rid of most of the spam/junk.
The segment is available in the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery, and is called Exclude Junk & Spam . To install it, simply ensure you are logged in to Google Analytics, and then access the segment in the gallery, clicking on Import.
Alternatively:
- Log in to your Google Analytics
- Go to Reporting
- Under any Report, you should see All Sessions and +Add Segment next to it (as shown below)
- Click on + Add Segment
- Click on Import from gallery
- Search for Savvy Exclude Junk
- That should bring up Exclude Junk & Spam by Savvy Search Marketing
- Click on Import
- Select Any View
- Click on Create, that’s it you are done!
- When you view reports, you can simply ensure this segment appears at the top
- You can compare data before and after segment by also having All Sessions shown
- When you are comfortable with the data, simply remove the All Sessions segment, so that you can see filtered data on all your reports
- Setting scheduled reports after you apply the Exclude Junk & Spam segment will provide filtered reports
