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Google Analytics Working on Referral Spam Solution

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google analytics referral spamAnnoyed at all the spam referrals in Google Analytics telling you to buy followers or download website buttons?  Google Analytics is working on a solution to the problem.

At Mozcon today, Adam Singer from Google Analytics confirmed that they realize the spam referral issue in Google Analytics is an issue and they are working on solving the problem.

He says it will be a solution from Google itself, as there are a few third party solutions that people can use to deal with the issue currently.

Singer says they are making the change on a universal level, which means that the solution will be scalable as referral spammers add new URLs into the mix to keep spamming.

He didn’t say when it would be available but said it is something they are working on, as they know the problem is a “major PITA” for marketers.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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Comments

  1. Hooray! This is fantastic news! It was getting so time consuming and painful explaining this to clients as well as server redirects, creating new reports etc!

    Hopefully they roll this out asap!

  2. Has there been any official statement from Google that they are working on the issue?
    I appreciate the announcement and I don’t doubt the effort Google puts into the issue but would like to communicate an official statement to our customers.

    Regards,
    Peter

      • Hey Jennifer, any updates on this as of yet? I haven’t been able to find anything on when they are rolling out – they are usually pretty quick and this is from last year. Thank you in advance!

  3. I’ve been plying a bunch of things, but what are some of the 3rd party services that was mentioned in the post?

    Thanks,

  5. It’s shocking that this has been an issue for such a long time without ANY validation from the Analytics team.

    A solution pretty much MUST come from them because your ability to filter is seriously limited and an incredible waste of time/resources.

  6. I agree with Jeremy. It is appalling that nothing has come form GA about this issue.

  7. Looks like Google implemented a solution around the middle of August. We use filters to cut out the spam (rather than bloat our htaccess file) and the non filtered results are now only a few percent out.

    Hurrah.

  8. I run a bunch of small domains. The stats from google are utterly useless nowadays. I have regressed to using apache based analytics. real shame!!!! It is over six months since this announcement and my stats only get more useless. I am not going to bother adding these filters for each domain.