Comments on: Best Strategies for Dealing with Bot Traffic in Google Analytics

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 07:10:44 +0000

Hi Kathy,
Great to hear you got it resolved. As far as I know, there is no direct impact on SEO. However, blocking at the server level – if you have the knowledge/assistance to do so – is always good to do. As you won’t need filters in that case to accomplish the same. And, the blocking rules are applied at the property level.

Best,
Paul

By: Kathy Long

Kathy Long — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 20:48:21 +0000

Thanks, Paul. This is great. I have a new client and immediately detected that 95% of their traffic was coming from bots. It was easy to see because it was all in direct traffic and 100% bounced. I managed to filter it out by identifying that they all came from one host name. But I was concerned that all those bounces might still be sending the wrong SEO signals to Google, so I gathered up the list of secondary dimension “Network Domains” and sent those to the host who proceeded to block them at the server level for me. Now the direct traffic in my View that shows all is the same as in my filtered View. So it appears we have successfully blocked the bots before they can even trigger a Pageview in Analytics. I’m happy with the results. Was my extra step necessary for better SEO? Too soon to tell with this client, and I may never know because this is a new client who did not even have Analytics active before me so I don’t have prior data. If SEOs are reading this, I’d love to know what they think. Hopefully Google is smart enough to recognize a bot when it “sees” it and disregards their activity. Is there data to support that? Inquiring minds like mine want to know.

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:09:45 +0000

In reply to Teddy.

Interesting comment! But does this mean you set up all new clients in the same GA account? In general, I highly recommend your clients to set up their own account and to give you access after. And to refrain from having multiple clients in own single GA account. Further, in my experience most sites – also from experienced analysts – are set up on -1 or -2. As this is the most logical way to approach the GA setup.

By: Teddy

Teddy — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:05:30 +0000

I always require my team to use a property ID with a suffix above 10 (UA-XXXXXXX-18) for new client sites, as we have found many bots attack suffices in the 1-3 range, since these sites are low-hanging fruit typically run by inexperienced webmasters/analysts (although there is little we can do about legacy accounts in this range with robust data history).

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:57:56 +0000

In reply to Nicolas Jardillier. Thanks for the heads up Nicolas! Yes, it is one thing to identify bad traffic in GA and on your website in general. Solving GA issues is relatively easy compared to solving bot and spam issues in general. Something which is very important for conversions, user experience and security!

By: Nicolas Jardillier

Nicolas Jardillier — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:16:29 +0000

As usual Paul a great article ! And as you mentioned, behind all of this, it is a way to identify bad trafic and then optimize servers or code (depending on the situation) and then increase performances. Indicator I consider as the most important for conversion and user experience on website.
Thanks again ;)