How to report a new bot url
I have some time for this, but I’ve been having some issues with a bot spammer on our website. It’s all coming from the same URL, and I’ve already placed filters on most things I care about so that it doesn’t affect my reporting.Basically, I am looking for a space to report the URL as a known bot spammer so that way GA4 can add it to it’s automatic filter.
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The short answer is:
The most direct and robust solution isn’t to rely on a user-submitted list for Google Analytics 4 (GA4) but to implement a server-side filtering mechanism using a server-side tagging setup with Stape, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol.
You can use a Google Cloud Function or a custom Stape client to inspect the incoming bot URL (referrer) against a custom blocklist before the hit is even sent to GA4.
For data reporting, integrating the Google Analytics Data API with BigQuery allows you to perform sophisticated, post-collection filtering and analysis on a clean dataset, ensuring the spam never pollutes your primary reporting or advanced analyses.
This method is highly scalable, more reliable than client-side filters, and ensures your data quality is maintained at the source, representing a significant long-term cost-saving over manually cleaning corrupted data.
The long answer is:
Your desire to report a spam URL for automatic filtering is understandable, but the most expert-level and durable solution is to take control of the data stream before it reaches Google Analytics 4, as relying solely on platform-level bot detection or manual submissions can be slow and incomplete.
The core of this solution lies in implementing server-side tagging via a service like Stape running on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
When a hit arrives at your server-side GTM container on Stape, you can execute logic to check the referrer.
This logic, often housed in a Google Cloud Function or a Custom Client within Stape, would use an API or a custom configuration to compare the incoming request’s referrer URL to your known bot spam list.
If there is a match, you simply drop the request and do not forward the event via the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol to GA4.
This is a superior, proactive solution because the spam data never enters your GA4 property, ensuring pure data quality from the start.
Furthermore, for advanced data analysis and reporting, you should leverage the BigQuery API to export your raw GA4 event data into BigQuery.
Once in BigQuery, you can use SQL to perform highly granular analysis, including re-filtering historical data based on your continuously updated bot list, which isn’t possible directly in the GA4 interface.
This integration of the Measurement Protocol for server-side control and the BigQuery API for reporting and historical cleanliness offers an authoritative, cost-effective, and technically robust defense against persistent referral spam.
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