We’ve had what looks like a bot searching through all our items, including sold ones, for the last month.
In the last 7 days we’ve had 315 visits. in last 30 days we’ve had 639 visits. It’s showing as from USA in google analytics. Is there any way we can get rid of it. or is there anything you can do from your end?
@dougfolksy @Folksyadmin
I get that too, the location is always Chicago, it’s really annoying isn’t it! I’ve also got someone (I don’t think is a bot though) from Redhill in Surrey, looking in my shop at nearly all the items including sold items every day, sometimes a few times a day for the past month or two now. I know it shouldn’t do, but it really bugs me as I don’t think it’s a would be buyer and makes my analytics unrealistic…
To block out the spambots on Google analytics I googled it and it came back with some links on how to do it, however, it doesn’t always work unfortunately as the Chicago one doesn’t seem to have a web address or anything to be able to block.
Hopefully someone will come back with a way to solve this as I’d be very interested to do this properly too.
Natalie xx
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I don’t use Google Analytics as I can’t make head nor tail of it. However, I’ve noticed on my shop stats for the last couple of weeks that I’m getting lots of views on really old out-of-stock items. I used to get the odd one but I’m now getting quite a few each day. I wonder if this is due to the same thing?
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This is really odd! I’m like you Helen @PocketfulCreations - I have analytics but it doesn’t mean much to me so I don’t look at it often. I’ve just had a look & the last week shows 250 users from Ashburn, USA - I don’t even ship to the US?! If it’s bots I don’t understand what the purpose is - what benefit is it to a US company to click on everyone’s items?
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I don’t have Google analytics either but have also noticed my view have gone up a lot for very old, expired items.
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I’ve also had quite a few view on out of stock items. Don’t use Google Analytics as I can’t understand it.
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That’s the one scanning our shop.
I get those and assume they are from older Pinterest pins ?
(one resulted in a good USA order so not complaining)
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I don’t use GA much but I’ve just had a look and I’ve got a load from Ashburn too???
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I’ve a always had the odd few which, like you, I assume are from old Pinterest pins but the last couple of weeks have been different. Rather than the odd view on the odd old item, it’s quite a lot of old items and quite a lot of views on each one. About half of my top views list each day in my shop stats are now old out-of-stock items. That’s never been the case until recently.
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You can turn off some bot views in Google Analytics by going to “Admin” then “View Settings” and checking the “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders” box.
I’d been getting major traffic on old items from Pinterest bots which I was able to turn off using this method - although I’m sure they’re still showing in the Folksy stats as my stats here are now consistently way, way higher than Google Analytics.
On the plus side my Google Analytics bounce rate is looking a lot better, since the bots were driving it up because they only ever viewed one item.
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I have absolutely no idea what a ‘Bot’ is 
I’m obviously not tech savvy but quite fascinated that people know where their views are from…how do you do this?
Will give this a try, thank you.
Not all Pinterest views are bots, but in the last few weeks I noticed I was getting many more than usual, mostly on older pins, and they were all coming from Ashburn, Virginia. Around half of my total visits and views were coming from there and they all originated from Pinterest and had a bounce rate of 100%. Not only is that typical bot behaviour but Ashburn is home to a massive bank of Amazon servers.
Folksy stats do not seem to be filtering these out so if anyone is seeing a lot of their old items getting more views than usual (and these items have been pinned to Pinterest in the past) then this may well be the cause.
It’s basically a view that is coming from a computer algorithm somewhere and not a real person @Bearlescent.
Google Analytics is the place you can get info on your views and where they’re all coming from. You can sign up for an Google Analytics account and they’ll give you a code that you put into a field in your shop settings on Folksy and from then on Google Analytics will track and accumulate data on visitors to your Folksy shop. 
Found the answer to why so many of my out of date items are being viewed and learnt something new, thank you x
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My OH had a play around with GA yesterday & narrowed it down to Pinterest. The analytics in Pinterest tallies with my Folksy stats page, so for me it’s only GA which shows this weird anomoly (which I wouldn’t have noticed if not for this thread). He changed the settings to exclude known bots & it only dropped by 2 views (so still 248 from Ashburn!)
I found articles going back to 2017 with people querying why they have hundreds of views from Ashburn, so clearly it’s been an issue for a while. Bloody Amazon!
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I just checked my data and it appears that it doesn’t retroactively remove the bot visits, only those going forward.
I did it about a week ago and I just went back to check and in the last 7 days there have been no visits from Ashburn. If I view the last 30 days there are well over 500!
I’m still seeing normal numbers of visits from elsewhere in the USA and normal numbers that have been acquired via Pinterest so it does seem to have just zapped those pesky Pinterest bots on the head.
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Ahh fab, I will check it again in a few days then & see if it’s had any impact, cheers Melanie
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I am glad that all this goes over my head…no idea what Bots are…(I could probably think of something rude but I spend too much time in the naughty corner as it is)…and never check analytics…or google to see who is looking at my shop.
I think that some people get too uptight about these things…I prefer to just use my time with my making…
I also don’t have a smart phone, so perhaps these things are to do with modern phones>
Off back into my dream world.
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