This post uses a common “Analytics spam” phrase as a hook around which to explain how to remove certain phrases from polluting your Google Analytics reports. You can also do a similar thing with links from certain domains, too.
As with referral spam in Google Analytics, non-useful traffic from other pretend sources is also something you want to filter out in order to preserve the usefulness of your Google Analytics profile(s).
Recently, on many of the Google Analytics profiles we manage, we have seen the following nonsense phrase showing up an awful lot:
“ghost spam is free from the politics, we dancing like a paralytics”
This useless phrase apparently draws traffic even to completely untrafficked accounts. It is therefore spoofing your analytics in some way, and you will need to filter this phrase out for the future.
How To Filter Out Rogue Search Phrases
- Go to the Google Analytics profile you’d like to fix,
- Click on “Admin”
- Click on the middle set of options, “Tracking Info”
- Click on “Search Term Exclusion List”
- Click on “+New Search Term”
- Copy / paste the offending phrase (in this case “ghost spam is free from the politics, we dancing like a paralytics”) and hit “Create”
- Done! Re-do the above for each offending phrase.
You can also filter a smaller part of the bigger phrase, for example “ghost spam” or “dancing like paralytics” though, for busy websites, this could create false positives.
Leave a comment below if you, too, have been experiencing this “ghost spam”!
thx for sharing. I just experienced something like this on my website, I was surprised to see keyword spam coming from the ghost is free form politics bla bla bla ..
I get the spammy message and thanks to your post, i have blocked the term. Thank you very much for sharing this to me