Google Analytics gains bot and spider filtering to better identify real traffic

Google Analytics has been updated with bot and spider filtering, a useful feature that excludes all hits from known bots and spiders so that webmasters can gain a better understanding of where real traffic is coming from. The checkbox for enabling this feature can be found by clicking View Settings under All Website Data on the Admin page in Google Analytics. 

“Selecting this option will exclude all hits that come from bots and spiders on the IAB know bots and spiders list,” writes Google. “The backend will exclude hits matching the User Agents named in the list as though they were subject to a profile filter. This will allow you to identify the real number of visitors that are coming to your site.”

Nestlé has been testing the solution and found favorable results. The feature should be rolling out to all Google Analytics users now.