: Why does it seem my GA include-only-hostname filter is filtering out hits from Twitter? I took the advice from this article to eliminate referral spam from my Google Analytics report by filtering
I took the advice from this article to eliminate referral spam from my Google Analytics report by filtering out all hits that didn't use my hostname. There is only one other filter on that view, one that filters hits from my IP. It is a straightforward predefined filter: Include only > Traffic to the hostname > that are equal to > (my hostname).
But when i check my unfiltered view, there are Twitter hits. There are no Twitter hits in the filtered view. This is the only valid traffic being excluded, and i am a little surprised - Twitter isn't using my hostname?
Is there a way i can get Twitter into the view?
Edit: as suggested i checked what hostname Twitter is using with a secondary dimension (in Acquisition > Channels> Social, 2nd dim. Hostname, found under Behaviour). That shows they are using the usual hostname, briligg.com. In the unfiltered view, there are 21 such hits since i set up the Twitter page. In the filtered view, there are now 4 Twitter hits, all from yesterday (which is after i asked about this). My AddThis report shows 7 hits from their share buttons over the same period. I'll discount generously for hits that could have been me checking links and share buttons and thus came from my IP and were filtered. There are still at least 7 hits that were filtered for some other reason. Small numbers, but big percentages.
Did some sort of updating in Google's system have to happen for this to register? The Twitter link is only a week or so old (the account is much older but i never configured it - i was just reserving the name). The share buttons are similarly recent.
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I guess that the answer is that you should correct your filter so that it accepts pageviews for briligg.com and briligg.com.
It is also important to note that for a given pageview, the referrer reported in GA isn't (necessary) the value of Referer header of the corresponding request, but the referrer of the request that brought the visitor to your site. This means that when the visitor follows internal links on your site, the referrer reported for these pageviews doesn't change.
The problem is that your site has absolute links that bring visitors from briligg.com to briligg.com. With the wrong filter, the initial pageview(s) will be discarded and the original referrer is lost. When the user then transitions from briligg.com to briligg.com, the referrer will either be reported as briligg.com or the pageview will be considered as direct.
First, you need to configure a filter that only excludes referral spammers from your view. Go to your view and set up the Filter as follow:
Filter type: Custom
Exclude
Filter Field: Referral
Filter patter use the following regex:
.*spammer1.tld|.*spammer2.tld|.*spammer3.tld|.*spammer4.tld
Check the tld (com, net, co, etc) of the spammer* and change it accordantly inside the regex.
*Find the list of spammers in Google Analytics in the Acquisition>All Traffic>Referrals report (You will need to monitor this section just in case new spammers arrive). There are other methods though, be aware that this method requires you to maintain the regex on a regular basis.
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