How to block “Ghost spam is free from the politics” keyword spam in Google Analytics

“Ghost spam is free from the politics, we dancing like a paralytics” is the latest keyword phrase used to spam Google Analytics accounts across the globe. The “Ghost spam is free from the politics, we dancing like a paralytics” keyword targets your website’s analytical data and makes it appear like someone who searched for “Ghost spam is free from the politics, we dancing like a paralytics” is visiting your website. However, no one is visiting your website. This is a keyword spam term used to target your analytical data the same way referrer spam does, by use of traffic bots and other blackhat SEO tactics similar to the likes of Google bombing.

Why is “Ghost spam is free from the politics” showing up in my Google Analytics?

“Ghost spam is free from the politics” keyword spam is a very questionable tactic used to promote online content. Keyword spammers use this tactic for several reasons:

• Keyword spammers want to promote a specific webpage or program and want webmasters to visit the webpage or search for it online and visit it through Google results pages.
• 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 a single page. This can cause problems measuring your website’s appropriate bounce rate as keyword spam may create an artificial 100% 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 “Ghost spam is free from the politics” 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 New Filter.

3. For the filter name enter “Ghost spam is free from the politics” or something easy you can remember and relate to this spam.

4. In Filter Type choose Custom Filter > Exclude Filter > Field: Campaign Term > Filter Pattern: Enter “Ghost spam is free from the politics” and click Save at the bottom of the page.