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I'm using event-tracking via the GA-collector (https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect) to see the usage of an API. When checking the event-category in GA the first line is always

to use this feature visit: EVENT-TRACKING.COM

Of course this is spam. But how can I get rid of this? Trying to block it in my .htaccess didn't work. So they are running the request directly.
Does anyone have an idea?

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Recently there has been a spate of Google Analytics spammers. They typically:

  • Send requests directly to Google's collector script without ever hitting your website.
  • Put advertisements for their website into referrers or other places where the data shows up in your reporting
  • Customize their requests only with your Analytics Id (but not with your domain name).

Because of the last point, an effective way to combat the spam so far has been to add a filter to Google Analytics that throws out data that is for some website other than your own. A member of the Google support forums has put together a guide to implementing filters for this purpose: http://www.analyticsedge.com/2014/12/removing-referral-spam-google-analytics/

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  • That sounds great, thanks! The funny thing is: my GA-ID is not visible on the frontend of my API. So they must send their spam to random IDs I guess.
    – Stephan Weinhold
    Commented May 11, 2015 at 16:39
  • That is what the article I linked to concludes as well. If they weren't using random ids, they would be sending the host name as well.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented May 11, 2015 at 16:52
  • Yes, the article is a good summary of the situation. I think it has to be a random ID because there is no hostname right now but only an IP.
    – Stephan Weinhold
    Commented May 11, 2015 at 17:00

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