How to Block secret.ɢoogle.com Referrals in Google Analytics

by Sean Doyle · Published November 12, 2016 · Updated February 29, 2024

What is secret.ɢoogle.com?

Secret.ɢoogle.com is a referrer spam URL that mixes fraudulent referral traffic data into your website’s Google Analytics reports. The spam URL will utilize various black-hat SEO tactics in order to make it look like your website received referral traffic from secret.ɢoogle.com. However, the referral traffic that appears in your Google Analytics reports did not actually land on your website. This type of web traffic is known as ghost traffic. This type of web traffic sends phantom visitors to your website’s data in order to make it appear as if someone visited your website from the referral URL.

The reason why secret.ɢoogle.com is spamming your website’s Google Analytics data is to get your attention and persuade you to visit the URL in your browser. If you visit the URL in your browser you will be forwarded to another website, including the long path listed below:

http://money.get.away.get.a.good.job.with.more.pay.and.you.are.okay.money.it.is.a.gas.grab.that.cash.with.both.hands.and.make.a.stash.new.car.caviar.four.star.daydream.think.i.ll.buy.me.a.football.team.money.get.back.i.am.alright.jack.ilovevitaly.com/#.keep.off.my.stack.money.it.is.a.hit.do.not.give.me.that.do.goody.good.bullshit.i.am.in.the.hi.fidelity.first.class.travelling.set.and.i.think.i.need.a.lear.jet.money.it.is.a.secret.%C9%A2oogle.com/#.share.it.fairly.but.dont.take.a.slice.of.my.pie.money.so.they.say.is.the.root.of.all.evil.today.but.if.you.ask.for.a.rise.it's.no.surprise.that.they.are.giving.none.and.secret.%C9%A2oogle.com

It is not recommended to trust websites and services associated with known spammers who engage in referrer spam. Referrer spam is a blackhat SEO tactic that disregards your website’s data in order to promote spam content. Someone who engages in referrer spam does not care about ruining your website’s analytical data. They would rather promote their website despite the repercussions and acquire you as a customer by any means necessary. Referrer spam is not a tactic used by legitimate and trustworthy companies and websites.

Referrer spammers typically target your website’s data for several reasons:

Referrer spammers want to promote a website and want you to visit the webpage or search for it online through Google search engine results pages.
Referrer spammers want to boost their rank on Google search engine results pages by creating backlinks. They do this by logging requests into your website’s access log, which is then crawled by Google’s indexing bots and seen as a backlink to the spam site.

Secret.ɢoogle.com Google Analytics referrer spam can ruin your website’s analytical data measured by Google Analytics. It can affect most of the data in your reports with fake web traffic and data. For example, secret.ɢoogle.com referrals will appear to land on a single webpage on your website and leave from the same website, which will create a 100% bounce rate. If your website is targeted by referrer spammers you may not be able to identify your website’s bounce rate. The same can be said about other data measured in most Google Analytics reports.

Although referrer spam can ruin your analytical data it will not harm your website or affect your website’s SEO, including your rank in Google search results pages. This is simply spam that wants to get your attention.

How to block secret.ɢoogle.com referrals

This guide explains how to block secret.ɢoogle.com referrals in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter that stops referrer spam and unwanted referral traffic at the campaign source. This is the method recommended by Google to block referrer spam in your Google Analytics account.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab> Cick Filters on the right side in the VIEW section.

2. Click the + ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.

3. Add secret.ɢoogle.com or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.

4. Select the Custom Filter Type.

5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add secret.ɢoogle.com and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage. To add multiple URLs to the same filter you can make a Filter Pattern similar to this with a | between each URL: Example.com | Example\.com | secret.ɢoogle.com

Also See: How to exclude all hits from known bots and spiders in Google Analytics (Bot Filtering)