Spambot / Ghost Filter Expanded – Deployment Recommended
Robert FrankA dramatic increase in spambot / ghost referral traffic was noticed over the past two months in Google Analytics reports. To block the spambot / ghost data from corrupting your sites’ analytics, a substantially expanded spambot / ghost filter was developed and tested.
The previous filter was designed to stop about 25 of the biggest spambot / ghost offenders. The new filter is designed to stop about 225 of the leading culprits.
Web Communication will continue to monitor GA data/reports for new spambot/ghost offenders, and eventually will create a second filter. (We hit Google’s character limitation with this expansion.)
Website/Google Analytics account managers are strongly encouraged to deploy the updated filter as soon as possible. (Please note: Departments that are partnering with Web Communications to help maintain Google Analytics accounts/properties have already had their spambot/ghost filters updated.)
If you are maintaining your own GA accounts/properties, here are the steps involved. (Estimated time: 1-2 minutes)
- Log into your Google Analytics account.
- Select a Google Analytics account.
- Click on “All Filters.”
- Select the ‘referral spam bots ghosts’ filter.
- Highlight and DELETE the old “Filter Pattern.”
- Copy and paste in the following filter pattern in the same field:
(.*(rich|uptim|websi|money|rank|site-|seo|keyword|sexy|share|search|traffic|porn|-?social-?|-button|o-o-|semalt|Get-Free|buttons-|darodar|cookie-law|compliance-|law-|ilove).*)\.(com|net|org|biz|co|es|online|info)|.*\.(xyz|it|рф|top|xn|me|ga|рф|cf|ro|ru)
- Check the first and last characters to make sure the entire filter pattern was accepted, and nothing was cut off.
- Click ‘Save’.
- Exit the account.
Thank you for your help in keeping WSU analytics accurate.
**Special thanks to Jeremy Bass for his expert coding in creating this filter.