Ghost Spam. What are these Weird Referral Sources in my Google Analytics?

This week's top client question:

What are these weird referral sources on my Google Analytics like traffic2cash.xyz and top1-seo-service.com and free-social-buttons.xyz (and on and on and on)? I am concerned because the bounce rate is very high for these? What do they mean?

Well, these sources in your Google Analytics and Blogger reports are called Ghost Spam. It is spam. They never actually hit your website. They enter into your Google Analytics through a backdoor path called Analytics Measurement Protocol which is a feature of GA intended to allow web site developers to gather and measure data. Hackers have figured out how to use it to their advantage to get into your reporting with out have your tracking code. To get your code, most probably they generate random codes with the GA pattern (UA-XXXXXX-Y) then using an automated script they send fake data directly to your reports.

Why are they doing this? Because they are using the natural curiosity of people reading their Analytics to garner traffic. Every day, hundreds, thousands maybe even tens of thousands of innocent people just like you open their Analytics in hopeful anticipation of seeing increased web traffic and learning more about their potential new clients. They go to the referral section and see tons of traffic from a "weird" URL and they click on it to see what it is. THIS MOMENT IS THE MOMENT THAT GHOST SPAMMERS WANT. Clicking on the link sends you to weird redirect pages where services are offered. Maybe it's SEO services for people who aren't sure whats happening in their Analytics. Nothing harmful actually happens (usually and yet). They are just hoping that you buy something from this redirected page and they get a cut. It's a cheap method for them to get tons of traffic. Most people don't buy, but they only need a small percentage to respond to an offer, they get their cut and move on. They don't have to invest tons of money into this Spam Scam. 

Isn't Google fixing this? Well over all - of course they are! Remember that GA is a free service and has many many many moving parts. When they make a change to one part, many other things change. Google doesn't take that lightly. So changes are thoughtfully handled with time spent measuring the ramifications of those changes. If they weren't working on it, it would a gazillion times worse.

Is it always in the referral sources? No. It's most often there, but it sometimes can appear in Organic (when you see random or nonsensical keywords), and sometimes Events (they can be tricky and say "to use this feature visit event-tracking.com").

How can I check for Ghost Spam? Follow the steps below. Everything that isn't tied directly to your domain name or to a vendor that you use for your site is most likely spam. MAKE SURE you choose a wide date range before you run this report.

And yes even Google.com is most likely spam. They use names like t"Google" because it looks popular and harmless. None of your web pages are directly on Google.com. It's not a "host" for you.

Special note... one of the most common misunderstood referrers is t.co. That one is actually good. It's Twitter! You can read more here if you wonder about that.

Ok I see it, know I have it and I understand it. What do I do about it? You have two choices. 1. (less geeky) You can adjust your reporting like we did above and disregard the bad data.

2. (more Geeky) You can apply filters to your Google Analytics that will filter out the bad data for you. This has to be done very mindfully so that you don't lose precious data. We will cover this in this blog.... Adding Filter to remove Ghost Spam metrics.

We will also be covering this for those using Blogger in the next few blogs as well.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions. You can follow us on Facebook or add your email to be notified of our new blogs.