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The Take Of Semalt Expert On Google Analytics Spam – How To Remove It

Google Analytics spam and referral spam have become real threats to businesses operating on the online platforms. Spammers have been taking advantage of website owners by visiting their websites and drives traffic to malware sites. To survive in digital marketing, firms and organizations have to clean up all fake visitors from their websites reports. Dealing with malware, trojan virus, and Google Analytics spam is a bit difficult than it is usually portrayed.

Getting rid of ghost referral spam, non-ghost referral spam, and Google Analytics spam entails creating filters and being vigilant by removing all malicious files and data from your report. A number of tools have been put into place to help clients get rid of malware and spam easily.

Igor Gamanenko, one of the leading experts from Semalt, defines the guideline on how to remove Google Analytics spam from your reports.

1. Setting up multiple views of Google Analytics

Creating two additional Google Analytics views to have a minimum of three views in total. New Google Analytics comprises of one view, that is mostly set up by default. Having a backup plan of your data is advocated for as your data gets affected after implementing the new changes.

Make your default view to be your main view. Rename all the website data in this view to filter out and remove Google Analytics spam, Trojan virus, and malware threats. The extra created views should comprise of a test view and a raw view. Set up your raw view without any filters or changes, and your view to test the changes done to your website before you make the variations in the default view.

2. Detect spam via valid hostnames

Detecting Google Analytics spam via hostnames is way much easier. The hostname represents the name of your website. To filter out fake reports, include legit hostname in your report. Rest of the hostnames gets ignored automatically. However, it's advisable to avoid filtering out real traffic as it can negatively affect your website progress.

Create another filter on your Google Analytics view that comprises of traffic to the hostnames specified. Start by executing your Test view and let it run for more than five days. Check the transactions to ascertain that the data remains the same since you were filtering out fake traffic. Create another filter in your main view and enter all valid domains in the filter.

3. Filter out ghost referral spam

Most of your Google Analytics report comprises of ghost referral spam and other malware. Referral spam works to send fake visitors to your website. To filter referral spam from your reports, create two filters and add all the ghost referral found in your list. Always start with your test view to check how it worked, and then implement the main filter.

4. Bots exclusion

Google Analytics has been working on techniques that will exclude all known bots automatically from your reports. Create the test view and the main view to filter out bots.

5. Generate a segment to filter out spam

Malware and Trojan virus can be very irritating when they penetrate into your website. Generate new filters that will exclude all known ghost referral spam from your active data. Create a segment to check on your history and exclude all ghost referral spam from your data.

Referral spam and Google Analytics spam are a real threat to website owners. Referal spam has been generating fake traffic to real websites with a sole aim of attaining engagement and real traffic on their malicious websites. A virus such as Trojan and malware have been widely used by spammers to create real traffic. Follow the above-highlighted steps to exclude referral spam and Google Analytics spam from your report.