Large amount of traffic in GA4 from Ashburn, VA

[wcssderek]

We're seeing a large amount of direct traffic from Ashburn, VA in GA4. In doing research, many have said this is AWS (Amazon) bot traffic. It amounts to 17% of our users and the average engagement time is 15s. It's really skewing our numbers as we don't do any business on the east coast. We can use filters to remove this data from reports in GA4, but would rather remove it from hitting our site at all. Is anyone dealing with the same issue and how have you blocked this traffic from hitting your site? Any good Geo-blocker suggestions?

 

[tarantino75]

Have you thought about creating a filtered report in GA4?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

We can use filters to remove this data from reports in GA4, but would rather remove it from hitting our site at all. Is anyone dealing with the same issue and how have you blocked this traffic from hitting your site? Any good Geo-blocker suggestions?

I think your safest best is to use filters, as you have already mentioned as an option. A major potential problem if you block access from Amazon Web Services (AWS), is that many major companies use AWS for processing. While Google most likely doesn't use AWS, other huge companies use their services and you may inadvertently block them from crawling your site for content. Also, Amazon is investing billions of dollars into AI software, not only for Amazon's own use (including Alexa) but also as a provider to third parties. So you probably don't want to block AWS if they are crawling your site. Lastly, Google has IP addresses all over the country/world, so it is definitely possible that they also use IP addresses that are identified in VA. I don't think you want to run the risk of blocking Google from crawling your site .

 

[wcssderek]

I think your safest best is to use filters, as you have already mentioned as an option. A major potential problem if you block access from Amazon Web Services (AWS), is that many major companies use AWS for processing. While Google most likely doesn't use AWS, other huge companies use their services and you may inadvertently block them from crawling your site for content. Also, Amazon is investing billions of dollars into AI software, not only for Amazon's own use (including Alexa) but also as a provider to third parties. So you probably don't want to block AWS if they are crawling your site. Lastly, Google has IP addresses all over the country/world, so it is definitely possible that they also use IP addresses that are identified in VA. I don't think you want to run the risk of blocking Google from crawling your site .

Thanks, Jeff. We've already set up filters for certain reports. You may be right about not blocking that traffic. Do you think it's possible that all this Ashburn traffic is legitimate but just being routed through AWS?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

I can't say with 100% certainty that it is completely legit, but AWS has pretty strict enforcement for third parties and most likely wouldn't allow use of its services for ulterior motives for very long. I'd just probably keep an eye on it and revisit if it continues after a couple months. I don't know anything about your website or the industry, so it is entirely possible that if your content is frequently being refreshed or added to, or is considered helpful/unique it wouldn't be unusual for someone other than Google to frequently check it for updates.

Are you using any third party tools/subscriptions that could be scanning your pages on a regular basis?

 

[wcssderek]

We do have a third party tool running on our pages that could be using AWS. I'll have to doublecheck.