Google Analytics Audit Test #

76

Malicious/Bot/Non-Human Traffic

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding where your actual traffic is coming from and what actual site behavior is.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Behavior

Can you tell what visitors are doing?

Google Analytics Audit logo

Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test evaluates whether your Google Analytics data includes traffic likely generated by bots, scrapers, or non-human actors.

These visits often come from spammy referrers, unusual geographies, abnormal session patterns, or even measurement protocol abuse.

Left unchecked, this traffic can inflate user and event counts, distort engagement metrics, and compromise decision-making.

Check This Test for Free! Instantly.

Our free instant audit tool checks for 90 issues in 90 seconds.

Then gives you a prioritized list of items to tackle.

No cost, no sales call... just free goodness.
‍

Run a free instant audit
Google Analytics audit test results.

How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In Google Analytics > Reports > Tech > Tech Details, review session counts by browser and OS:
    • Look for unknown or outdated browsers or operating systems.
  • Use Explore or BigQuery to identify:
    • Sessions with 0 engagement but very high frequency.
    • Strange user agents, referrer spam, or data spikes on obscure landing pages.
  • Check Traffic Acquisition for:
    • Suspicious referrers (e.g., “semalt,” “buttons-for-website,” etc.)
    • Sudden surges from countries you don’t target.
  • Also review event volume—are some events firing way more often than they should?

Automated, Free Audit

Run our Instant Audit to flag bot and spam patterns fast.

Seeing suspicious traffic? Hire a pro to isolate and eliminate the noise.

How To Fix

  • In Google Analytics Admin > Data Settings > Data Filters, turn on Internal Traffic Filtering and enable Known Bot Filtering (on by default but confirm it's active).
  • Add filters in Google Tag Manager or at the server level to block known spam referrers and suspicious user agents.
  • Use BigQuery to segment and exclude low-quality traffic from reporting.
  • Consider implementing:
    • CAPTCHA on vulnerable forms
    • Rate limiting
    • Firewall or CDN-based bot detection
  • Hire a pro to build filters, harden your tracking, and keep your analytics/reporting clean and human-focused.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

‍

An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

Hire a Google Analytics Consultant
Google Analytics consultant