Prevent tagging fraud

by Katrin Nebermann

Prevent tagging fraud

There are two types of fraudulent use of tracking codes or tags by third parties:

1. The tracking code is deliberately misused to artificially generate page views and transmit messages via the page name. These “fake” page names then appear in reports on page views. Such an approach was observed in the run-up to US elections, for example.
2. From time to time, entire websites or parts of them are copied. If the tracking code is also included in the copied HTML code, it will be copied at the same time. Although this helps to uncover the fraud, as the domains are output in the web analysis reporting, it also means that the statistics for the real website are falsified.

But there is also desirable or at least accepted copying or scraping. To investigate what type of copying is involved – desired or undesired – you can simply call up a report such as the year & month report and add the domain segment.

To exclude “unwanted” domains from reporting, enter the “real” domains under Settings → Account → Data filter → Domain filter and click on Save changes.

This prevents “tagging fraud” in your evaluations and ensures a reliable database. This “whitelisting” is very important because taking legal action against such fraudulent actions is usually very time-consuming.