What is /trafficbot.life and why is it appearing in Google Analytics?

There was a significant surge in bot traffic in Google Analytics from 31st January to 2nd February 2021.  One of the most common issues we saw came from /trafficbot.life and /bot-traffic.icu appearing in the Site Content reports of our clients.

 

 

They weren’t alone – lots of people reported similar issues on the Google Analytics support forums. There’s a good chance you experienced it too, if you’re reading this.

What is /trafficbot.life and how did it get in my Google Analytics reports?

It’s spam.  Long story short, it’s a bot which automates a process to ping hits to your Google Analytics account populating your reports with a URL.  Why? I guess they want you to visit their website and buy some more fake traffic from them. There is absolutely no value to doing this whatsoever – the reality is that this spam bot traffic is just a pain in the ass that’s messed with your data.

How do I remove /trafficbot.life from Google Analytics?

If it’s already hit your Google Analytics account, it’s too late.  Once data has been processed, it cannot be edited or deleted.  So you’re stuck with it, unfortunately.  All is not lost, however, because if you want to analyse data from a time period which includes this spam traffic, you can create a Segment to exclude it:

 

 

How do I prevent /trafficbot.life from appearing in Google Analytics?

If you haven’t yet experienced this type of bot traffic but you’d like to protect yourself against it – set up a filter for your Google Analytics view based on the Request URI – to remove any hits that include /trafficbot.life or /bot-traffic.icu.

With this in place, you won’t see any more hits from /trafficbot.life or /bot-traffic.icu. Of course, there may be other similar attacks in future so you may need to update the filter at a later date.  It’s also important to ensure you’ve ticked the box in your view settings to exclude all known bots as this will protect you against the most common attacks.

If you’re struggling with bot traffic or you’d like help setting up this segment or filter, get in touch – we’re always happy to help.

5 responses to “What is /trafficbot.life and why is it appearing in Google Analytics?”

1. Sina says:

   February 14, 2021 at 4:00 pm

   Thank you for that article, I inserted a filter. How the new segment exclusion works is not clearly, maybe you could add this in your text. The people who are used to work with that know what to do anywa, they wouldnt look for this special content in an article. Thank you.

   Reply
   • Michael Wilson says:

     February 15, 2021 at 11:54 am

     Hi Sina,

     Here’s how to create a segment:
     https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3124493?hl=en

     Thanks,

     Michael

     Reply
2. Steve Irvine says:

   March 7, 2021 at 7:16 pm

   Thanks for this. Noticed a huge spike in my analytics for this over the last three months. Good to know what it is.

   Reply
3. Peter Doak says:

   November 17, 2021 at 4:22 pm

   Hi Michael! Peter Doak here from your olden days, I was looking up our analytics and I saw this URL, thought it was weird, googled it, and up came your article, really useful information. Thought you might like to know that your article had an impact close to home! ????

   Reply
   • Michael Wilson says:

     November 18, 2021 at 10:32 am

     Hey Peter – a nice surprise to see a familiar name pop-up in the comments, glad to be of service!

     I listened to a couple of your podcasts not so long ago. 🙂 Hope you’re keeping well.

     Cheers,

     Michael

     Reply