Spam Google Analytics Hits: Czechia And Seychelles

For the past week or so, Google Analytics has been showing inflated stats for several of my pages. A while back, I’d written about fake traffic in Google Analytics from visitors that weren’t coming to your site. I don’t know whether the perpetrators finally stopped or whether their tactics were blocked by Google. But the recent surge of fake Google Analytics hits are real visits – most likely from bots from countries like Czechia and Seychelles.

#Classic Google Analytics Showing Bot Traffic

My site WP-Tweaks.com is pretty small, so it bears investigating when I get a traffic surge on a single day. Here’s a screenshot:

Spam Google Analytics Visits from Czechia and Seychelles

I can detect that this traffic is fake because the number of page views and the number of “unique pageviews” is exactly the same. Also, the bounce rate is 100%. With so many hits, I expect at least some visitors to click through a link or otherwise engage with the site. I’m also getting suspicious traffic from the Netherlands in this screenshot.

I’m certain this traffic exists, as opposed to simply “fake” traffic like the last time, because it has a source and shows that it’s coming from Google. So some script is clicking on Google search results, visiting the site, triggering the GA code, and leaving immediately.

Based on the metrics, here’s my estimate of the traffic I received on the 14th of August after filtering out traffic from Czechia, Seychelles, and the Netherlands.

Total traffic for the 14th of August = 596
Likely fake traffic = 226+156+28 = 410
Likely real traffic = 186

#Better Measurement Tools: Cloudflare Analytics and GA4

Since we’re going to be migrating away to Google Analytics 4 in any case, I thought I’d see whether other reporting tools were showing similar issues.

Tracking the Hits on GA4

Here’s a screenshot showing the number of hits detected by GA4:

Page Visits Counted by Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

As you can see, GA4 doesn’t count the traffic from Czechia and Seychelles, which means they’re likely bots that classic Google Analytics isn’t filtering. The reported traffic of 163 is much closer to my estimate of real traffic.

Tracking the Hits on Cloudflare Web Analytics

Another tool I use for measuring traffic is Cloudflare’s Web Analytics, which is focused on privacy and has a sleeker interface. Here’s a screenshot of the traffic analytics on WP-Tweaks.com from Cloudflare:

Web Analytics for WP-Tweaks.com on Cloudflare Analytics

This number is even closer to my estimate of likely real traffic than GA4. I don’t know how Cloudflare and Google Analytics differ in measurement, but there’s some divergence. For now, I prefer Cloudflare’s metrics – particularly since GA4 inexplicably delays data reporting for hours. GA4 appears to be more strict in its interpretation of visits than Cloudflare Web Analytics.

#Time to Abandon Google Analytics

All this points to a disturbing truth – like it or not, it’s time to start moving away from classic Google Analytics. Official support ends on the 23rd of July, 2023, but we should be moving away sooner, if possible. Unfortunately, while very good, Cloudflare’s Analytics solution doesn’t provide metrics like event measurement for clicks that I need to analyze my site usage. Microsoft Clarity is another good tool that doesn’t report statistics in a neat tabular format like Google Analytics.

GA4 is, unfortunately, still the best choice despite glaring problems with reporting delays that make it an inferior product as of now. Hopefully, the existing solutions will improve to match GA’s feature set before Google finally retires it.