: Google Analytics: How to remove unwanted entries It's been a couple of days and I am seeing entries like this on GA. How can I avoid such entries beside analytics_test?

@Michele947

Ah yes, the dreaded yet pervasive Referral Spam technique. Google Analytics tries to automatically remove referral spam, but doesn't catch all of it.

There isn't a good solution to this, currently.

Option 1 is to add the domain to an Exclude filter when you see it...OR...you can apply an .htaccess rule to ignore traffic from the referring hostname. This requires frequent maintenance, unfortunately.

Option 2 is to use an Include filter on your valid hostnames, but this won't work if the referral spam bot uses the measurement protocol or if it requests content from your site.

Here's a frequently updated article that mentions some different solutions, e.g. plugins and SaaS services: raventools.com/blog/stop-referrer-spam/
Google Analytics isn't the only product affected by this, btw.

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@Cugini213

Many of these can be eliminated with a hostname filter.

Open up filters for your domain and add a 'custom' filter, that only includes hostnames with your domain in them. For standard websites, there are no circumstances under which this would filter normal traffic - as all of them are viewing your content on your domain.

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