There was quite a sudden turn around in traffic (which had been rising) on one of the sites I manage. This started around February/March 2016. I searched to see if it was something others experienced and only found three blog-posts which suggested Google was somehow removing (at least some of the) ghost referral spam from Google Analytics reporting.
Is this true?
http://www.thesempost.com/google-analytics-referral-spam-removed/ http://howidoseo.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/ghost-referral-spam-is-gone.html
https://www.bigredseo.com/google-analytics-traffic-drop-feb-2016-dont-panic-yet/