Filtering spam links

Please read the documentation and related resources, it’s all there:

https://deconf.com/tips-improve-google-analytics-data-accuracy/

Thanks for your prompt reply.
I have ticked that box – they still come up but Im hoping it will flush out soon enough.

Filters applied the google end don’t seem to work, and indeed the google notes suggest that the filters will not be effective in such cases.

As a result it tends to reduce the value of the system greatly given all the fake referrer links that get displayed in the dashboard.

I, for one would be interested in a paid version of this plugin that would allow the user to create and update their own ignore list in the dashboard.

As a point of interest, they fake referrers now seem to ignore .htaccess blocks now too.

Hi,

.htaccess has nothing to do with this and has zero effect for this type of spam. Filters, as noted in the above tutorial, are applied from the moment they are setup. Since Google doesn’t re-process the old data, it’s absolutely normal to see this type of spam in recent reports.

I’m using the above method, and works perfectly, when properly configured; except for the referrer spam for which there is no viable solution, no matter the analytics service you’re using and the settings you may have in a plugin.

Given that the major problem is the referrer spam personally I will remove this plugin as it’s almost useless if one cannot create a blacklist / ignorelist that will work. Hence my question if it could be done in the dashboard.

In an attempt to stop the SPAM getting hold of the UA- number i have used the unicode instead so that if bots scrape the page it’s more difficult to spot the UA- code..

google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/front/tracking/code-universal.php

ga(‘\u0063\u0072\u0065\u0061\u0074\u0065’, ‘\u0055\u0041’+'<?php echo esc_html(str_replace(‘UA’,”,$profile[2])); ?>’,

and

window.google_analytics_uacct = “‘\u0055\u0041’+'<?php echo esc_html(str_replace(‘UA’,”,$profile[2])); ?>'”;

It’s a great plugin, analytics is being trashed by spammers getting the UA details, a slightly more convoluted way would be to use a javascript function to decrypt the UA code (just multiply the number by for example the time stamp in php and then divide it by that number in javascript) so it’s not actually visible on the page for people to scrape the function can reside on a different ga line also to make even harder for bots to scrape.

I have kept my current version simple, as i will have to re-implement the change each time you update the plugin.

@akfdev Most of the spam is sent using “an incremental batch”. I had properties that were never public that got spammed. The best way would be to apply the filters mentioned in the above tutorial since the spammers don’t scrap the tracking id and they are sending spams in batches generating the tracking ids from scratch.

Alin,

Thanks for that little update, i am implementing the filters as you’ve suggested. Thank you.

I’m using the Referral Exclusion List in GA to exclude domains from my referral traffic. Does this plugin use analytics.js or ga.js?

I ask this because there is a note the top ot the GA page that says “These settings only work with the analytics.js version of the tracking code. If you’re using the ga.js version, configure these settings in your code. If you’re transitioning to analytics.js from ga.js, customize these settings to match your previous configuration for data continuity.”

Hi,

The instructions at https://deconf.com/tips-improve-google-analytics-data-accuracy/ are out of date – the dashboard doesn’t look anything like that any more. Please advise how to do this in the new dashboard.

Those options are available in your Google Analytics account, not on plugin’s dashboard.

FYI, I found a video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6puAh7qsHs) that was very helpful, as the GA help resources are confusing. I couldn’t tell where the menus were located that they talk about. The video is very clear on where everything is, it’s just in a different place than where I was looking. After I excluded “known spiders and bots” I only had about 5 spam referrals sites left, so I created a “filtered view” and used the manual method shown in the video. As the guy points out, this would be a pain if you had to filter 50+ sites, so he has an open source software solution that I didn’t use. I’m still working on verifying my filters – my data goes away when I apply the filters?!?! But I did preserve my “All Web Site Data” view so I’m not worried. Have a great day!