Having russian audience, but not targeting them

[Andrea Puig]

I have a Google Analytics account tracking the results of a mexican website.

I'm not absolutely targeting russian audiences but since one week or so, I'm having russian audiences watching my website according to Google Analytics.

I don't know why this is but its lowering my google analytics trustability.

Can you somebody tell me why this is? and can I do something about it?

Thanks

[Yarmo Mackenbach]

Hello Andrea,

What you want to do is isolate the russian audience in Google Analytics (for example, by making a custom segment) and then checking from what domains the russian audience come from. From experience, chances are they are mostly (if not all) bots and spammers. You can recognize them by their domain names that sound very dubious (containing words like "watches"...).

You can then block these domains via modification of your .htaccess file.

Alternatively, you could filter out these domain referrals in Google Analytics (no retroaction, sadly). This is easier than modifying your .htaccess, but then, these bots and spammers will still be devouring your bandwidth.

I hope I was clear and that I responded well to the question.

Yarmo