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 Wilton says
I’m curious to see how Google is going to keep up with this. I seem to find new sites/referrers every month or so. Seems like it would be a lot of work to keep tabs on something like this and it be effective, but I look forward to seeing if it helps.
Claudio Heilborn says
Hi Mike, if Google can’t have a small team to service Analytics against Referral Spam… who could? I guess they finally decided to do so and a couple guys are filtering their info.
Cheers
Travis Bailey says
I’ve been monitoring a *particular type of account* prior to all of this, for reasons like this. Nothing in referral after February, so far. I can say it isn’t perfect, but it’s far better.
Jeremy rivera says
About time. This has been a slap in the face to every user of Google analytics, and the silence from their team just made it worse,
Claudio Heilborn says
Agree!!!
Bryan Casson says
Thanks Jennifer, this has been a long awaited addition, I really hope they can keep up with it.
Dennis says
Is this just a hunch? Or did Google announce this?
Jennifer Slegg says
Google hasn’t publicly commented on it – they very rarely talked about the issue being a problem at all. But many people are no longer seeing referral spam showing up as of last month – I have yet to hear from anyone who still has a problem with referral spam though. There was lots of chatter about it on Twitter as well when it was first spotted.
Chip Jones says
This is great news. I see a big drop in around January 11th for a couple of the unfiltered accounts I monitor. It was always amazing to me as to how little attention this issue received, especially from those who rely on accurate metrics reporting.
Craig says
Where are you seeing this? I’m still seeing the option to manually exclude bots within the View settings??
Jennifer Slegg says
Google didn’t remove any options, but are filtering specifically the referral spam in the reporting now.
Conor Treacy says
So that’s why we saw a visitor drop across the board on some accounts that we maintain. We had our own filter that we update, but it never catches everything.
Across the board, we saw a drop of up to 25% in traffic, but mainly with WordPress websites. Many of the e-commerce software sites that were operating on other software didn’t get the drop.
Yesterday I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why all of a sudden we saw a decline in the monthly report – but now it makes a little better sense!
Paula Allen says
Woohoo! This has been needed for a long time, so a big thanks to Google’s team. Cue the fireworks!
Margaret O says
I’m still seeing referral spam at the end of Jan (not mid-jan as reported), but Feb onwards looks so much cleaner. This is terrific news! Thank you for posting – I wasn’t sure if it was a quirk or the spammers had changed tactic and I hadn’t figured it out yet.