Categories: Google

How to block language spam

While I was working on my referral traffic spam article today, I have noticed one more form of spam in my Google Analytics statistics. It’s called a language spam and in this case it had something to do with Trump LOL.

Here’s the language spam volume:

When I filter it by country I can again see that these bots are coming from Russia (same as with referral spam). Now, apparently, someone from Russia (actually the guy behind this is Vitaly Popov, a well-known Analytics spammer) wants me to open this url: secret.ɢoogle.com and to vote for Donald Trump ?!?!? Mind blowing, really… As, you can clearly see that it’s again multi-byte domain, and that the letter G is multi-byte letter, and that it’s clearly a fake url/domain so don’t open it!

This spam actually just hits your Google Analytics, and no bot traffic is sent to your site, so all you need to do is to simply filter out these fake languages. To make things perfectly clear this kind of spam can’t harm your SEO or Rankings because there are no real backlinks or traffic to your site and Google also deosn’t use data from your Google Analytics for website ranking. The only one this spam is affecting is you! You are the only one who can see it while you’re checking your Google Analytics, and you should block it so your statistics are accurate and you can make some good decisions based on them.

Here’s the best way how to block the language spam: go to Google Analytics, and click Admin. Now under your account click All Filters:

and then click on Add filter and make a filter like this (follow my arrows from top to bottom of the picture):

Filter Name: write something descriptive so you know what’s this filter for: blocks language spam is a good name
Filter Type: pick Custom
Filter Field: search for and pick Language Settings
Filter Pattern: enter \.
Apply Filter to Views: select views that you want to apply this filter on and click Add (moves them from left to right into selected views list)
Click Save

That’s it! You have created a filter that will discard any language containing a dot (basically a domain name). This should remove your language spam from future Google Analytics stats.

However if you would like to filter current data and see the correct stats without the language spam hits you’ll have to create a new segment like this: on just about any report in Google Analytics click on +Add Segment:

and now click on red button +New Segment:

Now enter some meaningful name, for the language pick does not contain and just add a single dot in the filed right to it and press save above:

Here you can see the result of this filter with before and after charts:

This way you can filter data on any report. Just click add segment and search for the new segment we created (so it’s important to add a meaningful name to the segment so you can easily locate it anytime you need it).