To referral spam – which does not pose a serious threat – the bad guys add a message in Analytics usually via bots. Essentially, these bots create a hyperlink on all pages of the site containing a UTM tag (the information that Google Analytics uses to know what is the Source, Campaign or referral from which the visitor comes).
Trump Analytics Spam
What is “Secret.ɢoogle.com”?
Look carefully. What you see is not the belgium telegram phone number list google.com, but rather G oogle.com with a capital letter that makes a big difference!
Secret.ɢoogle.com is a domain owned by Vitaly Popov, a very well-known spammer. He was the first to use the so-called Ghost spam, a technique that uses the Measurement Protocol to send fake traffic to thousands of Analytics properties. This activity was defined by its creator as “creative marketing”.
How to block Google Analytics referral spam?
As the name suggests, we usually find this type of spam in the referral section of Analytics. If Analytics is not properly set up – as is the case in most cases – in the Acquisition > Referral path you may find suspicious entries such as:
secret.google.com
1-free-share-buttons.com
100dollars-seo.com
copyrightclaims.org
darodar.com
Head over to my post on how to eliminate referral spam and follow a few simple steps to set up Analytics properly!
