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let me show you my problem:

  1. I Installed Analytics by GTM with UA tag
  2. My Website is an Wordpress based
  3. Started tracking access

Then, in JetPack plugin statistics, the pageviews and monitoring are doing great. No trash, no SPAM, nothing.

But, in Google Analytics, the access are coming just like SPAM, from a lot of countries over the world with SPAM reffers like Ad.fly and social-buttons

Here what I did:

  1. Installed a plugin at Wordpress named WP BAN
  2. Configured WP Ban to block access from the domain ad.fly and the others spammers

The pageviews dropped from 60/day to 3/day. But, the access is still comming from spams like before with Analytics.

In Jetpack it is still okay...

What should I do? It looks like trouble in Google Analytics or GTM, not server, because Jetpack are doing well, but it`s just in this website of my monitoring pannel...

Maybe it`s an Wordpress trouble too, I must find it.

Can anybody help me?

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2 Answers 2

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Adf.ly is an affiliate marketing network, not spammers, to my knowledge. I wouldn't block that traffic if I were you.

It sounds like you were overly aggressive with the traffic you blocked, without doing much research into the topic.

Read this: http://www.analyticsedge.com/2014/12/removing-referral-spam-google-analytics/

I have .htaccess rules that send crawlers from spam referers back to the domains they came from.

For ghost referers, they never hit your site so you have to have a hostname filter (described in the article above). Since ghost referers ping Google's servers directly, no other analytics software shows them.

I'd rather have unfiltered data full of spam (that I could manually remove) than have incorrectly filtered data that shows 3 visitors when I have 20 times that much.

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WP Ban is a good start. I would also apply some filters in your Google Analytics account.

Moz has a great article that talks about all available options to get rid of referrer spam.

Also, if you want to look at your old data without spam you can create a segment that filters it out.

Google has done a pretty terrible job at filtering out referrer spam and there seems to be no resolution to this issue at this time.

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  • Terrible job?? How about done nothing? This (referrer spam and the lack of interest in solving the problem), in my opinion, speaks volumes about where Google is at these days. The old do no evil moto may officially be dead with the reorganization around Matt Cutts leaving. Simply look back to what has happened since his leaving and how Google seems to respond. I am not suggesting cause and effect, but rather a watershed moment that may have been signaling a shift that had already begun. I get the impression that Googles own character has changed from kindred to corporate.
    – closetnoc
    Dec 18, 2015 at 16:16
  • @closetnoc hahaha I was just trying to sound say it nicer is all :0
    – dasickle
    Dec 18, 2015 at 16:18
  • I do not like to criticize Google too much because they do an extraordinary job, however, they do these things that are absolutely ridiculous from time to time but also has historically fixed their mistakes. However, these days with sooooo many over-lapping updates and some penalizing valid and valuable sites at a more rapid rate since the original Panda, the do no evil moto is certainly in question. The reason I say this is that there seems to be a sea change in corporate attitude punctuated by their silence. I am thinking more management driven and less technology driven.
    – closetnoc
    Dec 18, 2015 at 16:31
  • My question is: Is it really spam? Let me show you an example: - Yesterday I posted at blog and a lot of people saw my post. Then, Jetpack shows 60 pageviews, with Facebook and Organic Refferral. In this same day, Analytics shows 3 pageviews (after blocked spam) and spam refferral.
    – user3446267
    Dec 18, 2015 at 17:19
  • I would trust GA over Jetpack for pageviews count.
    – dasickle
    Dec 18, 2015 at 17:26

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