Nimesh, to start, make sure you’ve checked the box in your Analytics view settings to “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”. Then, follow the steps here to begin tracking the ISP, service provider, and network domain. Then follow the steps in this post here to identify and filter out traffic from the offending city + ISP.

Since last 1 week suddently i have started getting traffic facebook with time spent less 1 sec with 100% bounce rate & reported under referral section. I am certain that it’s bot traffic but i want to know how can i stop it.

From the day I had started getting it, I had enabled auto products upload (catalog) for shopping ads. I thought FB bot is visiting the link to verify the product. I had paused it immediately after 2 days because i was getting the traffic. It has been more than a week since i have disabled traffic but i am still getting traffic. Could you help me identify root cause & show some direction

Excellent question. Your surest option would be to collect the network domain yourself and store it in a custom dimension. Simo Ahava has set up a handy Google Tag Manager template to facilitate the process. He’s also published a guide on using it and setting up the custom dimensions here.

If you’re not using Tag Manager, you can still get the ISP info and plug it into a custom dimension. Just let me know. I’m happy to assist.

Unfortunately, starting in February, Google Analytics deprecated Service Provider and Network Domain!! We filtered out all Irvine traffic just to isolate the page load time issue, and it indeed fixed it.

However, going forward without the ability to see Service Provider and Network Domain, how will we be able to filter out bot traffic without simply excluding Irvine – ideas?

The Facebook ad bot’s purpose is likely to verify that the ad URL exists and returns a 200 response. Bot traffic (from FB or otherwise) shouldn’t have any impact on Facebook ad optimization because bots don’t typically have Facebook profiles. Facebook only shows ads to Facebook and Instagram users. So, unless these same bots happen to be avid Facebook users, as far as CTR goes you likely don’t have anything to worry about.

The issue with CTR may be sub-optimal targeting and/or sub-optimal ads. Be sure to run split tests on your ads and audiences. Keep the winning combinations. Then try to beat them. Rinse and repeat.

Now, to answer your question…

There are a few things you could do to prevent bots from firing your pixel. A simple solution would be to remove the tag. Most bots don’t load JavaScript. So, they’d only be tracked by the loading of the actual “pixel”, i.e. the 1×1 image loaded in the tag. Of course, by doing so you run the risk of not tracking a small percentage of real users whose browser does not run JavaScript.

I’m running into exactly the same issue, it’s a new business and i’m worrying this bot traffic is affecting my ad optimization. If the Facebook Pixel is receiving lot’s of data from bots and tries to find people like this bot traffic my ads will just be optimizing on bad audiences. CTR is really low for my ads. Do you have anyway to block these bots from firing the my pixel?

Thanks!

Thank you