Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Michelle,

I can think of 2 main benefits of using words in URLs have instead of numbers.

If you are reading an article about Paella, and there is a list of recipes from different pages:

• mysite.com/453112
• othersite.com/how-to-cook-best-paella/

The second link is most likely to get more clicks. The same situation on Google search page, although the title is more important a readable URL will always be better to the user.

The second benefit for SEO purposes is that matching keywords from the title of you page and the URL will give you a boost, how much will be it is to discuss.

Here is an excellent MOZ article about the topic

https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

Hope it helps,

Carlos

Hi Lauren, most likely this is caused by spam, lately spammers have been hitting with fake direct visits along with the referral. You might want to check if you have something similar to free-share-buttons on your referrals.

These referrals are ghost spam and as I mention before they also hit with fake direct visits,  to identify them go to

Acquisition > Channels > All traffic > Select Hostname as a second dimension

You will probably see a fake hostname or not set. Also, if you check the landing page they will be  "/" and the page title "Home Page" instead of the title of your real home page.

Like I said this type of the spam doesn't have a real hostname, so if you create a filter with only your valid hostnames. You will get rid of all ghost spam(current and new) no matter the way it shows, referral, page, keyword, direct.

You can find detailed information about this issue and the solution in this article

http://www.ohow.co/unusual-increase-in-direct-traffic-on-ga-spam/

Hope it helps,

Acquisition

Currently is not possible, but it will be a good feature, I think it is a matter of time before this functionality is available, at the moment there is no other way than sharing the login. Here is

https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20199538-is-there-a-way-i-could-add-another-user-to-access-my-pro-account

Hope it helps,

Hi Nick,

I'm assuming you are seeing that on Google Analytics. First of all you don't need to worry about ranking on Google since they don't take into consideration any metric from GA. Here is what Matt Cutts says about it.

Second there is a good chance that this spike of direct traffic is caused by spam, check your referrals and see if you find free-social-buttons or any other unusual referrer. If you do, then that is the cause of the high bounce rate.

To stop the spam, you should create a filter based on your hostnames in GA. Excluding USA won't do much since the spam can com from many countries including Canada. If you need more information, this article will help you,

Unusual spike of direct traffic (Spam)

Hope it helps,

Carlos

There are few other reasons why bounce rate from Google Analytics doesn't affect ranking if you think about it not everyone uses GA, so that wouldn't be a fair measure. Another reason is the spam, most of it doesn't even get to your page, so there is no interaction whatsoever leaving fake data, and by now Google is more than aware of it.

However, you are right, as you mention the algorithm Google uses is complex and constantly evolving, so there might be another way to measure the time spent on your page after a search, for example, the back button of the browser.

So we can split it if the high bounce rate comes from fake traffic/spam in GA, then there is nothing to worry about. If it is from valid traffic, then it shouldn't be taken lightly since Google might be using other ways to measure it rather than GA.

Again Google knows the one and only truth, so we can only make educated guesses based on what we see

Carlos

• Hi Ira,

  Including only traffic from USA will stop many of the spammers but many will continue hitting you, as you can see in the screenshot I attached. I recommend you to try the solution a filter based on your hostnames.

  This solution requires a little more time to set up, but it has **3 huge advantages, **and you won't have to exclude all the world except USA.

  • You will stop the spam before it hits you, adding a filter for the referral after you see it will stop it, but by the time you apply it you will have already hits of the spam.
  • You will need only ONE filter to stop all ghost spam, instead of creating various sets of filters.
  • Lately, some of the spammers(e.g. free-social-buttons) have been hitting GA accounts with fake direct visits along with the referral, the filter for the referral won’t stop the direct visit, on the other hand. The Valid hostname filter will stop ALL ghost spam in any form whether it shows as a referral, keyword or direct visit.

  This is what I've been using on my accounts for the last moths and I haven't received a single hit of ghost spam. Combining the valid hostname filter with a Campaign Source filter you will control the spam. Here is a detailed guide and more information about these solutions.

• http://www.ohow.co/what-is-referrer-spam-how-stop-it-guide/

  Hope it helps,

U6yhnlt.png

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,

Hi Noah,

Excluding the whole world would be a drastic solution, I know the spam is a bad issue, but you could be missing real traffic even if you are a local website, and even if you don't, you will still be getting spam coming from USA and there is quite some. I recommend you to try other solution a filter based on your hostnames.

This solution requires a little more time to set up, but it has 3 huge advantages, and you won't have to exclude all the world except USA.

• You will stop the spam before it hits you, adding a filter for the referral after you see it will stop it, but by the time you apply it you will have already hits of the spam.
• You will need only ONE filter to stop all ghost spam, instead of creating various sets of filters.
• Lately, some of the spammers(e.g. free-social-buttons) have been hitting GA accounts with fake direct visits along with the referral, the filter for the referral won’t stop the direct visit, on the other hand. The Valid hostname filter will stop ALL ghost spam in any form whether it shows as a referral, keyword or direct visit.

This is what I've been using on my accounts for the last moths and I haven't received a single hit of ghost spam. You can find more information of how this filter works and a detailed guide to set it up in this article.

http://www.ohow.co/what-is-referrer-spam-how-stop-it-guide/

If you are not convinced and still want to exclude all countries you can follow the same guide for the valid hostname on the article and just change the filter field for Country and put United States in the filter pattern

Hope it helps,

Hi Cesar, I see many cities/countries(122/8) used by 4webmasters but not Fort Lee, I attached you a couple of screens. However, it is possible that it is using it, ghost spammers can fake most of the data. To be sure select Fort Lee and select as a second dimension source, and then you will see where it that coming from.

Have you try using a filter based on your hostnames, this will get rid of any ghost spam no matter what or where they come from. If you check the hostname used by this type of spam you will see that they use either a fake hostname or they leave it as not set.

You can check this related question if you need help setting it up and more information about it.

http://moz.com/community/q/where-is-all-the-referral-spam-coming-from#reply_299545

Hope it helps,

Vn2nbmm.png j3UUrXw.png

Hi Jajiv,

Sure there is, you can follow this step by step guide is very well explained.

http://authoritywebsiteincome.com/how-to-actually-set-up-google-analytics-click-tracking-affiliate-links-and-external-clicks-step-by-step-guide/

Hope it helps,

Hey there,

Do you see any of these referrals on your reports 4webmasters, free-social-buttons, trafficmonetize... (there are many) If you do then you don't have to worry about security issues or anything apart from your data quality.

You are not being attacked, at least personally, this type of spam is called ghost since it doesn't have any interaction with your site whatsoever and strikes many GA users.

As I mention the only thing you should worry about (big thing though) is your data. Here is a related question on MOZ that will help you get rid of it, I strongly recommend you to follow the valid hostname solution.

Hope it helps,

Carlos