Do Ghost Traffic/Spam Referrals factor into rankings, or do they just affect the CTR and Bounce Rate in Analytics?

[seequs]

So, by now I'm sure everyone that pays attention to their Analytics/GWT's (or Search Console, now) has seen spam referral traffic and ghost traffic showing up (Ilovevitaly.com, simple-share-buttons.com, semalt.com, etc).  Here is my question(s)...  Does this factor into rankings in anyway?   We all know that click through rate and bounce rate (might) send signals to the algorithm and signal a low quality site, which could affect rankings. I guess what I'm asking is are they getting any of that data from Analytics?  Since ghost referral traffic never actually visits my site, how could it affect the CTR our Bounce Rate that the algorithm is seeing?  I'm hoping that it only affects my Bounce/CTR in Analytics and I can just filter that stuff out with filters in Analytics and it won't ever affect my rankings. But.... since we don't know where exactly the algorithm is pulling data on CTR and bounce rate, I guess I'm just worried that having a large amount of this spam/ghost traffic that I see in analytics could be causing harm to my rankings....  Sorry, long winded way of saying... Should I pay attention to this traffic?  Should I care about it?  Will it harm my site or my rankings at all?  And finally... when is google going to shut these open back doors in Analytics so that Vitaly and his ilk are shut down forever?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Short answer: no (or at least, very unlikely)

Google publicly states they don't pull data form inside GA, and realistically they don't need to. They are only concerned about the performance of their search results, and how that traffic responds to individual results. They also have no reason to lie about not using GA data, as there are so many other sources of information that are better.

"And finally... when is google going to shut these open back doors in Analytics so that Vitaly and his ilk are shut down forever?"

Great question! Hopefully soon.

[Carloseo]

Hi seequs, to complement Cyrus answer, here is an explanation of Matt Cutts related to your question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU. And if you think about it, it wouldn't be fair since not everyone uses Google Analytics.

About the spam harming your site, if we talk about ghost spam there is nothing to worry(except for your data of course) since there is not real interaction with the spam and any of your pages, it all happens in GA. On the other hand, Crawler Spam does access your site, and it uses your resources, although is nothing to be alarmed since visits from this type of spam are less frequent than ghosts.

If you want to fully block crawlers you can do it by adding some lines to your .htaccess file, like this

STOP REFERRER SPAM

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

It seems that the problem with the spam is not that simple. For what I understand they are preparing a guide. In the meantime, if you are not already using a filter based on valid hostnames, I recommend you to do it, one filter, and you will forget about the ghost spam. You can find more information about this solution here

http://moz.com/community/q/seeing-massive-spikes-in-direct-traffic-with-100-bounce-rates?#reply_298133

Hope it helps,