A client of ours recently contacted us asking if their website had been hacked. She is familiar with Google Analytics referral spam, however seeing spam or adult/porn landing pages seemingly found on their website, concerned her.
In the ‘Behavior’ > ‘Site Content’ section under the ‘Landing Page’ report we found the following ‘landing pages’ listed. (Google defines a landing page in this report as “pages through which visitors entered your site.”):
- domination.ml
- redtube-talk.ga
- guardlink.org
Google Analytics Landing Page Spam
The good news is that their site was not hacked, but rather the target of a website analytics spamming attack. This can be double-confirmed, as you can see some of the same websites listed in the referral sources report (as seen in the ‘Acquisition’ > ‘All Traffic’ section in the ‘Referrals’ report (those darn ‘social buttons’ and ‘semalt’ entries.)
Google Analytics Referral Spam
How Can I Filter Out Landing Page Spam Data in my Google Analytics Reports?
I am looking to find a method to filter out this spam data in GA. It seems that the same filter for Spam Referrals (via Campaign Source) can’t be re-purposed for Spam Landing Pages.
I’ll report back when I find something out. In the meantime, you can filter out data ‘after the fact’ using advanced custom segments.