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How to filter out bot and spike attack traffic in GA4 analytics
Hey there,
So I’ve got a bit of a poser on my hands. You see, my GA4 account’s been picking up this undefined, unknown, zero-engagement traffic, right? I’ve tried to kick these out of my reports to no avail. Rang up the folks from GA4 support, and turns out my account’s been on the receiving end of a bots/spikes attack – GA4 logged all those guys without batting an eyelid, though.
Thing is, both UA and GA4 analytics are hitched up to my website, but the UA’s traffic is as clean as a whistle – no bots or spikes in sight. You got any ideas on how to sort this out?
Cheers!
P.S. I tried throwing all sorts of GA4 setting filters at the problem but it just shrugged them off. Wanted to move my domain to Cloudflare, maybe switch on some WAF security, but hit a bit of a wall there – company restrictions and all.
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2 Replies
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Hey there,
I understand how frustrating it can be dealing with bot traffic. Unfortunately, GA4, unlike UA, doesn’t support account-wide filters which might be why you’re struggling with this issue. However, there are still a few tricks we can try!
One approach is to set up filters in specific Explore dashboards. Another way around this might be to export the data and then apply filters during ETL, or in BigQuery (BQ). While it might be a bit of a roundabout solution, it could help keep your reports clean.
If all else fails, you can also consider just letting the bot traffic be. With a bit of luck, the numbers might dwindle on their own over time. Keep on keeping on!
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Yes, bot traffic can indeed impact analytics and skew your data. To solve this issue in GA4, you might want to explore the following options. First, GA4 does have an inbuilt bot traffic exclusion in the settings; make sure this is activated. Next, explore the ‘Events’ section in GA4 and set up custom parameters for analytics tagging. This can help you filter out non-engaging, suspicious traffic. Finally, consider using Google Tag Manager, and set it up to filter out traffic with no engagement metrics. These actions should help to limit the amount of bot traffic appearing in your GA4 analytics.
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