Spam Bots Are Skewing Your Web Analytics
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
by Brian Blankenship
Marketing
Spam Bots Are Skewing Your Web Analytics
Ever seen a spam comment like this?
Or been asked to type something into one of these to prove you’re human?
These things exist because of spam bots – insidious programs that crawl all over the World Wide Web, trailing links to fraudulently boost their own web stats.
They could be infecting your website, too. Maybe even right now.
This isn’t so much a problem if you have CAPTCHA or some other spam-stopping program installed to prevent fake comments or form captures.
But what about your site’s analytics? How do you know which traffic is composed of real people, and which is just spam bots skewing your results?
You need to install some filters.
I’ve gone through all the Google Analytics properties managed by Balcom and added analytics spam filtering to each one. It took some trial and error to get it just right, but I’m confident that the new numbers we’re seeing are accurate – for now, at least. Spam bots are always evolving, always adapting, and we’ll have to adapt with them to stay ahead of the game.
Here’s what happens when you install similar filters in your analytics:
- You should no longer see fake hits from spam sources like “get-free-social-traffic.com” (you can see examples by going to Acquisition/All traffic/Source-Medium).
- The analytics you see will be pure and directly related to the domain.
- You might see a dip in sessions or visits since removing the fake hits, but the data going forward will be more accurate.
If you don’t have Google Analytics, you need to install it now. Google Analytics tells you all sorts of important things about the people who visit your website – how many there are, where they come from, which pages they click on and how long they stay, among other things. This helps you fine-tune your content and navigation to keep visitors engaged longer and urge them toward conversion into customers.
If you’re new to the website management world and this all sounds Greek to you, relax. You can leave it in the hands of the experts. Ask us about building and managing a custom website for you.
Tags: Web & Digital