Understanding bot traffic or analytic spam in Google Analytics

Last updated: 2/2/2021
The current bot traffic we're seeing is going to nonexistent URLs that end with something like trafficbot.life, bottraffic.live, bot-traffic.icu, trafficbot.live, or bot-traffic.xyz.

Although it's hard to say exactly what these bots are after, it's not unusual for a website owner to suddenly notice a large amount of bot traffic in their Google Analytics (or other tracking platform) stats. This traffic is often referred to as analytic spam because it only shows up in analytics but doesn't ever register on your server.

Because it's spam that isn't hitting your server, there's unfortunately nothing we can do to block the traffic (as there isn't actually any traffic to block!). The good news is it's not causing any type of security or load issues on your server. However, if you want to get a better idea of your real traffic, you may be able to filter out any unwanted referrals with these instructions. 

If you run ads on your site, and depending on the types of ads you run, you may see a lower-than-normal RPM calculation due to this spam. However, this number is merely a calculation based on the pageviews in Google Analytics; the spam doesn’t impact earnings at all. Using the filter above may help you get a better picture of the true number.

In most cases, website owners are seeing a burst of spam for a limited period of time. Our best advice for now, annoying as it may be, is to ride it out.