Is getting daily updates of some list (my original way) better than the Moz article? https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter

Why would we choose this one? I guess I don't really know what the best answer is at the moment.

@thestackhq Hey Matt, thanks for the comment. When we build tools, we always build them for ourselves, and our clients first. If they turn out to be any good, then we might share them. So this solution is merely just something that worked for us.

The Moz solution is an inclusive one. If we use an inclusive filter based on existing referrers as Moz suggests, referrers from new, unsolicited links will get filtered out. As inbound marketers, our clients are constantly earning new, traffic dense links. And so with an inclusive list, you'd be missing some good stuff unless you we're always switching to the unfiltered view, and checking for new inclusions.

In the Moz post, it says the exclusion list is a tedious way of doing it. And so it is, unless you have a team working each day watching incoming referrer spam, checking out each source, and updating the list. That's our job.

And so the way this works is as we see new referrers coming in, we get pinged on Slack every hour with the new ones, and our team reviews them and decides whether referrer spam or not. If the former, we blacklist, and our list is updated. The only tedious part for you I suppose would be downloading our segment every couple of weeks as we update it (we update it hourly actually). 

Moz way isn't a bad way, it just doesn't work for our business and clients. 

@thestackhq Ghost referrer spam can be taken care of by making an inclusive filter for your hostname. You're basically telling Google Analytics: "Only track traffic coming to my hostname." The reason ghost referral spam hits your analytics is because it's coming pinging an invalid hostname. 

Any other hostname that isn't valid SHOULD be filtered out, e.g. (not set), simple-share-buttons, googlsucks.com, get-free-traffic-now.com, etc. Filtering by hostname is the best move for ghost referral traffic, as stated in the Moz article above under You only need one filter to deal with ghost spam. And you don't need to keep updating an exclusion list, because you're telling Google Analytics to only track valid traffic coming to your hostname. 

@adamgsteele Why would an inclusive hostname list cause new links to be filtered out? As long as those new links are pointing to a valid hostname (i.e. your domain), the referral traffic will be tracked in GA. 

You would need to update an exclusion list for crawler spam, but your solution is for ghost referral spam according to your blog. Just want to understand what you're saying above better. 

@tommyo92 sorry Tommy, as you might imagine today ended up being a little crazy. 

Both wouldn't hurt. In fact, it would probably catch more true ghost spam stuff if there are new referrers that we (our system) hasn't yet seen/caught.

Here's my thinking: use the inclusive approach, but that likely won't solve the problem long term. Why? Because the hostname can be spoofed. So a spammer for example could set the hostname to loganix.net, and because you trust this site the approach on Moz wouldn't detect such referrers as ghost spam. We're seeing this more and more everyday. So for us, we feel long term, an exclusion list is the way to go and is the approach we have taken. We've also automated as much as possible so as to be less burdensome.

Our tool doesn't discriminate by what means the spam referrer ended up in our GA account, it just stops it dead in its tracks, one at a time, through sort of crowd sourced way by using many many sites that are hooked into this tool, which gives us a wide reach as far as collecting new referrers goes. 

So to reiterate, for the time being, a combination of the two makes most sense to me. Attack the true ghost stuff, and a have an exclusion list.

My apologies if I wasn't all that clear earlier : ) 

@adamgsteele Interesting. I hadn't considering spammers spoofing your hostname. I've noticed that filtering by hostname takes care of 99% of ghost spammers, but that 1% slips through. I wonder if they're coming in through a hostname spoof.

Thanks for the tremendous exclusion list btw! One thing to note: you might want to set up a different view for your list so the "all traffic" view isn't being adjusted. One of the Cardinal sins Google Analytics warns against is modifying the "all traffic" view. I personally don't follow this rule, but I imagine a few people might be hesitant to modify their default view :) 

@tommyo92 This makes more sense to me than any post I've read on the topic. 

This is actually a problem I was trying to solve this morning as luck would have it. Thanks!

Upvoted for headline :)

Awesome!! Needed this

This is a huge, huge problem that I've attempted to tackle in the past in a number of different ways. If anyone can do it, it's Adam @loganix

This has been driving me mad and also hard to explain to clients so thanks!

(super useful post, though. I've been running into this problem with a few clients and it's the first time I'm really seeing it) 

Absolutely hate this problem! Great advice 

My preferred method is to set a cookie, then define a segment with that cookie, and filter out everything else.

It's been working great!

Here's the tutorial I used to get it working: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/03/19/eliminating-dumb-ghost-referral-traffic/

@burchems Many ways to skin a cat : ) Although, Relying on users to accept cookies sounds less than ideal. Not only that, this seems like an awful lot of steps, vs a couple clicks and voila, segment applied. 

Personal preference I guess. When I've got clients that don't get a ton of traffic anyways, making sure we have 100% of the legit traffic is super important. 

Hadn't read much about the cookie method. Appreciate the good reading, and the comment on our blog : ) 

@adamgsteele split testing or retargeting, etc. requires cookies or pixels, so most websites have some form of cookies already in place. It's not a matter of users accepting it (although a website should advise users that they use cookies via a privacy policy). 30 minute setup, and done. If you don't have the staff to maintain a perpetually growing exclusion list...

Thanks @adamgsteele (Adam Steele) for sharing this interesting solution.

I'm using the spam filters solution. Right now and it has some limitation because you have to update the spam list very often.

I really don't understand why Google doesn't block them when gathering and processing the data before they even get to our Analytics dashboard.

So I would definitely give your solution a try! Let's hope it will work as described. 

Just a question: will I be able to use the analytics shared link with my clients' analytics account without having them to sign-up to your email list?

Thanks.

@amelm Hey Amel!

I imagine Google will get their act together re this. Matter of time. Probably a priority thing. Or perhaps like link spam, they are putting together a solution whereby we will do their work for them, lol.

What other agency folk have done, is just http://magistrate.co/a/150927-2217-eg8ba.png and the segment will be applied to all sites under your GA umbrella.

The other option, save the URL we gave you when you signed up, and just open it up again after logging in to another account. 

Hope that helps some, and thanks for checking out our tool. I appreciate it : )