Huge Traffic Increase from Poland

Have you checked your Google Analytics recently?

If you have you might of spotted that you’ve had a bit of a traffic boost…

However when you look into it, all is not as it seems.

The extra traffic is coming from Poland! (not really one of my target locations)

When you drill down into where the traffic is coming from, it appears to be coming from some very suspicious-looking websites…

What’s going on?

I did some searching around online and it appears that a lot of others websites have also seen a sudden increase in traffic from Poland.

The main theory seems to be that a group of hackers in Walsaw have got hold of lots of Google Analytics IDs and are firing them on their servers.

This means that it’s not actually real traffic. Or even bot traffic. It’s fake traffic that doesn’t exist.

Why are they doing this?

No one really knows.

There are a few theories.

1) To boost their own exposure and rankings

By making their URL show up in Analytics reports it sparks curiosity and people ar likely to visit the websites listed. This in turn could have a positive effect on their rankings.

2) To hack or install Malware

This is probably the most likely reason. The websites look suspicious and they probably want to install something nasty on to your computer. Don’t visit these websites!

How to clean up your Google Analytics Reports

If you’ve been affected, your reports are going to be skewed.

Luckily, there is a filter you can use. Probably the easiest way is to filter out the traffic from Poland (unless, of course, this is usually a large percentage of your traffic).

You can find it at the top of most reports.

You can also stop Analytics tracking the sites in the future.

It’s buried away in the Google Analytics settings.

Find it in Admin > Data Streams > Your Stream > Configure Tag Settings > Show More > List Unwanted Referrals

Enter the domains that appear in your source / medium reports. The main one is news.grets.store