: What is the status of Google's action on "Ghost Referrals" in Google Analytics? I got this in Google Analytics: A significant portion of referral traffic to property example.com is from

@Heady270

There are plenty of threads about this in the Google product forums:


Lots of visits through simple-share-buttons.com
How can this be self-referrals if the domain is nothing to do with me
How to block 4webmasters.org, Russia traffic?
What is Google doing about all the SPAM in Analytics?


Here are some of the best comments from those threads:


Dreamframer: I just called google analytics help. The support was very interested in the problem, and the guy forwarded it to someone else. He also said that we have to keep this thread live, because there are people from Google who monitor these forums, and eventually they will respond.

AnalyticsEdge: They are aware and are discussing. They never pre-announce changes, and no one discusses security measures in a public forum (unless a scandal occurred). Do not expect a public announcement until something changes.

Having said that, they do watch the forums for what is happening, so keep complaining. There are workarounds in the meantime. A hostname include filter matching your site hostname gets rid of most of it. Switching to a -2 tracking code is another alternative (but you lose historical continuity).

By the way, fake traffic bouncing in Google Analytics has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on search engine rankings.

Whims: This has been an ongoing and growing problem for a number of months. Google [is] aware of it but at this stage [has] not addressed it.
Interesting discussion on it here if you should choose to read further
plus.google.com/u/0/+StephaneHamel-immeria/posts/hSSgMSqoLup

The Google+ Analytics page has this to say about the issue now:


GA Data Quality is Important. Here’s how to eliminate bad referral data.

Good data analysis depends on good, quality data. In today’s business environment there are many things that can impact data quality. If you use Google Analytics, there are a number of tools at your disposal to ensure good, quality data in your account.

For example, we have tools that will automatically eliminate data from automated spiders and bots. We also have filters that can be configured to eliminate specific data. Exclude filters can be used to exclude data from a specific referral source.

We’re putting together a guide of recommended settings to help ensure the best quality data in your account. Look for it soon.

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