How to Filter Spam Referral Traffic from Google Analytics
Have you noticed spam traffic showing up in your Google Analytics data? While it can be annoying, it’s a very common issue and something many of us face on a daily basis. If you’re new to the process, filtering spam referral traffic from Google Analytics may not be as easy at it appears. Here is the best way to filter out that unwanted traffic and show accurate data.
Step 1
Login to your Google Analytics account.
Step 2
Locate the domain where the “spam referral” traffic is coming from. Usually you can find these links by sorting by bounce rate or session duration. A real person will interact with your website or be on your site for longer than one second.
Step 3
After you have found the URL you want to filter out, head over to your admin page and select “filters.”
During this step, you can create a new “view” if you want to keep all the web and filtered traffic separate.
Step 4
To set set up the filter to remove the spam referral traffic, you need to exclude the campaign source. While there is a referral option, this is the best way to have it not show up again.
Step 5
Great news–you’re done! Now that the filter is set, you shouldn’t see the traffic from that spam domain anymore. If you set up a different view, you can change between views and see the data you wish to see.
Be sure to see our help document on how to make someone a Facebook admin if you’re interested in other tutorials.
