Block “beat with a shovel the weak google spots” keyword spam in Google Analytics

“Beat with a shovel the weak google spots addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ilovevitaly” is the latest keyword phrase used to spam Google Analytics accounts globally. The “beat with a shovel the weak google spots addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ilovevitaly” keyword targets your website’s analytical data and makes it appear like someone who searched for “beat with a shovel the weak google spots” has visited your website. However, no onehas actually visited your website. This is a keyword spam term used to target your analytical data and Google Analytics ID the same way referrer spam does. Keyword spam uses traffic bots and other blackhat SEO tactics to fill your data with nonsense similar to how Google bombing works.

Why is “beat with a shovel the weak google spots” showing up in my Google Analytics?

“Beat with a shovel the weak google spots” keyword spam is a very shameful tactic used to promote online content. Keyword spammers use this tactic for several reasons:

• Keyword spammers want to promote a specific webpage, program, or browser add-on and want webmasters to visit the webpage or search for it online and visit it through Google results pages. In this case the keyword spam is promoting the ilovevitaly.com add-on for Mozilla.
• Keyword spammers want to boost their rank in Google Search and acquire backlinks by generating dubious keywords associated with a hostname webpage.

Keyword spam itself is not entirely dangerous to your website. It will most likely not cause any trouble with how your website is accessed by your visitors or ranked by Google. However, in some cases keyword spam may use up your website’s bandwidth and CPU by creating multiple site requests to your website. In other cases, keyword spam is generated by traffic bots which create ghosts hits and never actually land on your website.

The biggest issue with keyword spam is that it can mess up your Google Analytics data. Keyword spam can ruin your website’s bounce rate. Search term traffic from dubious keyword spam hostname URLs ‘mostly’ land on a single page on your website. They also leave from the single page which may create an artificial 100% bounce rate. Keyword spam can also ruin other Google Analytics data including your Acquisition and Behavior data. Since keyword spam only shows up in your Google Analytics metrics you can create a filter to block keyword spam using your GA account.

Keyword spam will not essentially hurt your search terms or the way your website appears in Google. Google is aware of this tactic and is great at protecting websites against “keyword spam bombs.” For example, not too long ago a malware author tried to Google bomb Botcrawl.com with the term “Viagra.” However, nothing on our website references Viagra and if you search for “Viagra” in Google you will not find Botcrawl.com listed in search result pages.

How to block “beat with a shovel the weak google spots” keyword spam

At the moment, the only way to stop keyword spam is to make an exclude filter in your Google Analytics account.

1. Go to the Admin tab.

2. Select All Filters in the Account section and click + ADD FILTER.

3. For the filter name enter “beat with a shovel the weak google spots addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ilovevitaly” or something easy you can remember to relate to this spam.

4. In Filter Type choose Custom Filter > Exclude Filter > Field: Campaign Term > Filter Pattern: Enter “beat with a shovel the weak google spots addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ilovevitaly” and click Save at the bottom of the page.