If you’re running Node on Windows (who isn’t? [don’t answer that]), updating Node.js & NPM to the latest version is a little different than on Linux or OSX. In some ways, it’s easier than you might think.
To update these, the easiest way I have found is to download the latest version of Node.js (NPM is included) from the Node site here. Choose 32bit or 64bit (depending on your setup) and install.
Now if you run “node -v” or “npm -v” you’ll see you have the latest and greatest.
If you use Google Analytics, you’ve probably noticed in the past few months a ton of fake traffic in your website analytics. Traffic from referrals like social-buttons.com, best-seo-offer.com or 100dollars-seo.com (and other obviously legit sites). You’ll notice this traffic has a zero session view time and only visits the root of your site. Actually, “visits” isn’t even the correct term, because to my knowledge, these site are just loading the Google Analytics javascript with your tracking code. I guess they believe it’s an easy way for people to see their site “giving” you traffic, then you visit them – and who knows what happens next.
Below are the steps I use to create a new segment in Google Analytics. You can use this segment instead of the “All Sessions” default.
(I called mine “Real Traffic”, since I’m attempting to keep only actual user visit data).
Make sure Sessions and Include is set, then select Hostname and Matches Regex. We’re including multiple domains (your domain and others you want to include (like webcache.googleusercontent.com). Be sure to add your domain to this list! Note: the “|.*” is RegEx for and + starts with.
Now the second rule has 2 conditions and is removing the other part of the bad / spam data using referral sources. This is where the action happens and starts to really clean the bad fake traffic. Make sure to set Sessions to Exclude, and use “and” in between the two parts of the condition.
That should be it. Save your segment and see if it makes a difference. I prefer this method over filters since it doesn’t remove any data.
In some of my test sites, I’m finding 96% of the traffic is fake (below is a comparison).
For reference, here are the sites I’ve found so far to be junk and I’m excluding:
social-buttons.com simple-share-buttons.com free-share-buttons.com free-social-buttons.com event-tracking.com Get-Free-Traffic-Now.com buttons-for-website.com semalt.com best-seo-offer.com best-seo-solution.com buttons-for-your-website.com makemoneyonline.com 100dollars-seo.com dailyrank.net Edit 7/15 - 2 more additions to add: success-seo.com videos-for-your-business.com Edit 8/3 - another awesome referrer: yourserverisdown.com
Chris Bitting 