Have you ever wondered how much of your traffic in Google Analytics comes from bots and spiders? Tired of seeing Semalt in your analytics and having to filter it out? Google has added a new feature in Google Analytics that lets you filter out traffic from bots and spiders. Now this will not filter out every single spider that accesses your site, however, it will help you to obtain better data. Be sure to annotate the change in Google Analytics.
If doing this for a client site, you will want to inform your client what was done and explain an expected drop in traffic. I would not use this on my “clean view” as you never know when something could go wrong with your data. And as with any new filter test this out on your “test view” before adding to to other views. One more noteworthy item is that this filter is not retroactive.
Here are the 4 easy steps to filtering out those pesky bots and spiders:
- After you’re logged in go to the Admin tab
- Under the View column, click View Settings
- Select the checkbox next to “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”
- Click the Save button
Prefer visual aids? Check out the screenshots below.
