When I do a seminar or a training (I am Google Regional Trainer in AdWords & Analytics) direct traffic is often one of the tougher things for the audience to understand. My audience is usually comprised of digital marketers, SEOs, AdWords specialists, and SMB owners so IT/web development background is relatively rare. That’s why when asked […] Read more…
The infographic below is our 5 minute guide to Google Analytics referrer spam. In it we cover what’s the effect of spam on your stats & reports, why does it happen, how exactly does it happen and what are 4 main approaches to dealing with it. The infographic contains descriptions of the two ways referral […] Read more…
Since my last posts on how to eliminate Ghost Referrer Spam in Google Analytics & Google Analytics data integrity attacks two things have happened: 1. The number of people complaining about spam referrers / spam events / spam pageviews in webmaster forums and Google Groups have increased exponentially 2. The Google Analytics team noted on their Google Plus […] Read more…
One of the most frequently visited reports in Analytics is the Source / Medium report. This is a primary reason why it’s targeted by referrer spammers, as we discussed in a recent article. There is, however, a much more trivial, yet common issue with the source / medium report that we see during audits and […] Read more…
In a previous post about referrer spam in Google Analytics I hinted that a much bigger issue might stem from this fairly harmless attack. The problem I present in this article extends to basically all Google Analytics data, for any website out there, no matter how big or small. The problem is how to preserve […] Read more…
This article deals with the problem of Google Analytics referrer spam (prominent referral spammers are semalt, darodar, buttons-for-website). I explain why and how it actually happens, why currently proposed solutions fail and I describe a working, albeit not perfect solution for the issue. Contents (click to jump to that part): The problem of Google Analytics referrer spam […] Read more…
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