Identify and Remove referrer spam from Google Analytics using Power BI

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There are a lot of blog posts aiding people to get rid of referrer spam in Google Analytics and although they are effective, the spammers are usually one step ahead of you, and spam will find its way in your data.

How serious is the problem?

It varies depending if you have a lot or a little traffic and whether spammers are targeting your site or if it is a random attack.

I wanted to find out how serious the problem was for some of the sites I manage, and here is what I found out using our growth dashboard:

Before removing the spam:

before spam filter

After removing Spam:

after spam filter

So, for this site 1% of the monthly growth is caused by spam…Not good right?

Ok, so how did I do that? Lets go through the steps and the new dashboard.

What insights can we get with this dashboard?

Remove spam

In this dashboard you will be able to understand:

Spam that has gone through despite the filters from referspamblocker.
Identify potential spammers that are not yet caught by referrerspamblocker and add them to your own spam list and filters.
Basically, keep your data spam-free!

Watch it on

If you would like to see a live version of the dashboard or learn how to build it, you can watch it in our YouTube Channel. If you want to download the file, you will be able to do it down below.

How to keep spam away proactively

With this dashboard, you will be able to keep spam away from your data, but it is good practice to filter out the spam before it hits the views you use for reporting.

I use a service provided by referrerspamblocker, that automatically sets spam filters on your Google analytics account and it does it for free!

I really recommend you to use their service, and then use my method for the spam that still makes its way in your data.