Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Strange keyword showing in GA
-
Hi All,
Since last two days I am seeing a very strange keyword appearing in Google Analytics. Why such keyword appearing in GA? any idea?
Please see keyword in attachment.
Thanks
-
It was kind of humorous, at first. It's now showing as returning organic traffic. Direct link to screencap from the original post:
-
Hi Alick,
You might find this article useful: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data - the two options that are listed is blocking bot traffic using htaccess - or filter them in Analytics. If you check the link I gave you in my first answer - there are also some useful resources listed. Other resources can be found here: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/google-analytics-referral-spam (and off course - just google "referral spam" - it's quite a popular subject)
Hope this helps
Dirk
-
Hi All,
Today I got same error for my other website as well. I don't know how to stop this.
Thanks
-
Referral spam is getting out of control lately for all my clients' sites. I really hope Google can do something about it soon.
-
Got to love that referal spam!
I've not seen this one yet in my reports, kind of disappointing really :(.
-
Hi
it's an attempt to combine analytics spam & being funny. In each case you're not the only one - see this discussion posted yesterday : http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/analytics-spammer-can-haz-humors-who-else (the image is a bit better - the words are not in a foreign language, but are funny faces made in symbols)
rgds
Dirk
-
Ok, the language seems Thai to, how do I know it? I am a Castle fan and just watched the recent episode of it J
Anyways, the reason why it is appearing is because someone is searching for these keywords and your website is appearing in the search results at his end. This could be a bot, a machine or may be a real human.
If the search number is one or few, you don’t really have to worry about it but if its in a decent amount like 10 or so in that case you should take preventive measure like check your security, as someone can try to hack your website or some other issues.
Why your website is appearing? Again many reasons, the kind of links pointing back to your website, one or few of them could be shady, the content you just shared went a lil more viral in other part of the world or several other reasons.
My idea is to do a bit more research about where this traffic is coming from, how often and what is the amount of traffic that you are receiving, how much time a people spend on the website when enter using this keyword and more.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Showing wrong image in the SERPS
Hi Guys, In organic SERPS Google pulling incorrect product image, instead of product image its showing image from relevant products, Checked the structured data, og:image everything is set to the product image, not sure why google showing images from relevant product sidebar, any help, please?
Technical SEO | | SpartMoz0 -
Stop Words and keyword optimization
Ok, so I understand Google doesn't use stopwords (like "a" or "the"). Therefore if I am optimize for a keyword phrase, and say find an opportunity for say: "how to create stuff something" But it actually reads better as (although doesn't sound completely out of place as above) "how to create stuff in something" Which is better for SEO? (ignore usability \ readability in your replies please and assume it reads reasonably either way as that was just an example)
Technical SEO | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Screaming Frog showing 503 status code. Why?
Screaming Frog is showing a 503 code for images. If I go and use a header checker like SEOBook it shows 200. Why would that be? Here is an example link- http://germanhausbarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/36-UPC-5145536-John-Deere-Stoneware-Logo-Mug-pair-25.00-Heavy-4-mugs-470x483.jpg
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Inurl: search shows results without keyword in URL
Hi there, While doing some research on the indexation status of a client I ran into something unexpected. I have my hypothesis on what might be happing, but would like a second opinion on this. The query 'site:example.org inurl:index.php' returns about 18.000 results. However, when I hover my mouse of these results, no index.php shows up in the URL. So, Google seems to think these (then duplicate content) URLs still exist, but a 301 has changed the actual goal URL? A similar things happens for inurl:page. In fact, all the 'index.php' and 'page' parameters were removed over a year back, so there in fact shouldn't be any of those left in the index by now. The dates next to the search results are 2005, 2008, etc. (i.e. far before 2013). These dates accurately reflect the times these forums topic were created. Long story short: are these ~30.000 'phantom URLs' in the index out of total of ~100.000 indexed pages hurting the search rankings in some way? What do you suggest to get them out? Submitting a 100% coverage sitemap (just a few days back) doesn't seem to have any effect on these phantom results (yet).
Technical SEO | | Theo-NL0 -
HELP: Wrong domain showing up in Google Search
So i have this domain (1)devicelock.com and i also had this other domain (2)ntutility.com, the 2nd domain was an old domain and it is not in use anymore. But when i search for devicelock on Google, the homepage devicelock.com does not exist. Only ntutility.com comes up. I asked one of the developer how the redirect is happening from the old domain to the new one and he told me its through a DNS forward. And there is no way to have an .htacess file to set up a 301 instead. Please help!
Technical SEO | | Devicelock0 -
Google Showing Multiple Listings For Same Site?
I've been optimizing a small static HTML site and have been working to increase the keyword rankings, yet have always ranked #1 for the company name. But, I've now noticed the company name is taking more than just the first position - the site is now appearing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd position (each position referencing a different page of the site). Great.. who doesn't want to dominate a page of Google! ..But it looks kind of untidy and not usually how links from the same site are displayed. Is this normal? I'm used to seeing results from the same site grouped under the primary result, but not like this. any info appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregDixson0 -
Tags showing up in Google
Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Domain authority and keyword difficulty
I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment. When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0