[Method] How my competitor screwed my analytics

RightInTwo

RightInTwo

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Let me first say that I DO NOT CONDONE THIS. I wanted to share this with the community to be on the lookout for this in case it happens to you.

I rely pretty heavily on Google Analytics for my website. I know where all my traffic is coming from, where to improve, and also what keywords are working. That was all until a competitor of mine decided to take my tracking code that is on display in my source code and install it on every single one of his sites- and he has a ton of sites that are not related to this niche.

Literally overnight, my analytics reports were a mess and were virtually unreadable. Traffic was pouring in from all kinds of whacked out sites and my keyword summaries where ridiculous. Fortunately I had a hunch who did it and was able to send a nice little letter from my lawyer.

I have no idea what I would have done if I didn't know where to send the letter to. Does anyone know what to do in that situation? Be on the lookout, it was a huge pain!
 
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sounds crazy mate, glad you sorted this out
 
really really crazy, thanks for the alert!
 
wow, crazy idea.

I would have to recommend if possible to include another analytics service just so your not 100% reliant on GA.
 
This is why I use software on my server to track my traffic directly from Apache. No outside sources can interfere with my reports.
 
Not sure. but there is a way of exporting data from one analytics acc to another...google it..may be that works.
 
Geeze that's crazy man!

There isn't a way to disallow or allow domains in G Analytics? I'm actually surprised! I would have guessed that there'd be that ability some how, and some way.
 
Truly an evil method. I know a guy that used to do something similar. he was a hacker in nature so the guy just took his competitor analytics tracking code and simply injected it on hundreds of exploited websites out there. I guess his competitor was driven crazy since he had no one to sue...
 
Thank god that he took only your Analytics and not your adsense code. I got a friend who had his Adsense code stolen and installed on all kinds of junk websites and he started receiving all kinds of clicks. You can imagine this is much worse ...
 
If he is on a wordpress / user-friendly CMS,
he can simply change his analytics code.... (in the meanwhile, you can too)

UA-XXXXXX-1 to UA-XXXXX-2

Yes. this will screw up your history / previous data,
but it will take time for him to change all his site as well.

You get the idea.
 
Wow It is crazy yet very smart of them. But in order to use this method you need many website with many niche.
 
RightInTwo said:
Let me first say that I DO NOT CONDONE THIS. I wanted to share this with the community to be on the lookout for this in case it happens to you.

I rely pretty heavily on Google Analytics for my website. I know where all my traffic is coming from, where to improve, and also what keywords are working. That was all until a competitor of mine decided to take my tracking code that is on display in my source code and install it on every single one of his sites- and he has a ton of sites that are not related to this niche.

Literally overnight, my analytics reports were a mess and were virtually unreadable. Traffic was pouring in from all kinds of whacked out sites and my keyword summaries where ridiculous. Fortunately I had a hunch who did it and was able to send a nice little letter from my lawyer.

I have no idea what I would have done if I didn't know where to send the letter to. Does anyone know what to do in that situation? Be on the lookout, it was a huge pain!
Click to expand...

I feel sorry for you, but look at the positive side of things, you have all that data about his websites and where he gets the traffic, for what keywords he ranks and so on, you could easily steal his niche ideas, rank higher than him, and take all his traffic :)
 
Wow, all of us that use Google Analytics are vulnerable to this type of attack. I thought the code would only work when it was on a page with www_yourdomain_com.
 
paulcarter97 said:
Wow It is crazy yet very smart of them. But in order to use this method you need many website with many niche.
Click to expand...

He had hundreds of websites, all of which seemed to be generating traffic. I'm not sure if he bought traffic to those individual sites or not, but there was a LOT.
 
I feel bad for you bro. But i guess youre lucky to have had a hunch on who the guy was. imagine experiencing that without even the lightest idea who did it! :o


i have always thought that because we need to verify our primary site with GA that this cannot be done. It turns out that like adsense, once you have verified a primary site, you can use it on other domains as you please. :(
 
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