Top all-time · #9075
Analytics-Toolkit.com
Company blog · blog.analytics-toolkit.comdatabusiness
Analytics-Toolkit.com is the company blog at blog.analytics-toolkit.com, writing about data and business. Since 2014, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “Google Analytics Accept-Language Header Spam”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Analytics-Toolkit articles on referrer (ghost) spam in Google Analytics and how to filter it out of reports. Commenters cite them as fixes; some A/B testing statistics pieces are also discussed.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Google Analytics Accept-Language Header Spam4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-11-28
What Hacker News says?
My very recent meta-analysis of 115 A/B tests reveals that a large proportion are highly suspect for p-hacking: http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2018/analysis-of-115-a-b-t... Going the Bayesian way, as suggested in some comments, is no solution at all, as I am not aware of an accepted Bayesian approach to dealing with the issue: http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2017/bayesian-ab-testing-n... (feel free to run sims,…
Comment linking /2017/5-reasons-bayesian-ab-testing-debunked/
on “p-Hacking and False Discovery in A/B Testing”Submitted Google Analytics Accept-Language Header Spam as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI created an open source A/B test framework[0], which also uses Bayesian analysis on the dashboard. IANAS(tatistician), but from what I understand it’s still better to plan the check point in advance, rather than stop when reaching significance. A couple of articles worth reading [1] [2] (can’t exactly vouch for their validity but seem to make some good arguments that appear thought out) [0] https://github.com/Aleph…
Comment linking /2017/the-bane-of-ab-testing-reaching-statistical-significance/
on “p-Hacking and False Discovery in A/B Testing”Submitted Language Spam – The Latest Google Analytics Spam as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNote that the "k" is a Cyrillic "к" and the trick is to get analytics users to click referral spam: > Referral (or ghost) spam wasn’t that innocent. Curious marketers and web analysts checked domains they supposedly got traffic from. Referrers got them transferred to trashy websites with ads, viruses or porn. > ...[Vitaly] needed software to get his websites into people’s analytics reports. His words were “if only o…
Comment linking /2016/language-spam-latest-google-analytics-spam/
on “How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google Analytics”Submitted Simpson's Paradox in Web Analytics as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSame here, we have one of the most authoritative blog posts on the topic of referral spam and it, of course, mentions semalt who were one of the first to use this tactic of "promotion" of their service: http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/guide-referrer-spam-g... We got the same letters, sent to our ISP, instead of us, and we are a legal entity, easy to identify and contact in multiple ways. Legalese is shit, of…
Comment linking /2015/guide-referrer-spam-google-analytics/
on “Ask HN: Abusive-seeming legal threat from Semalt”Submitted Why Every Internet Marketer Should Be a Statistician as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNice, didn't know about that one. Edit: I looked at my website, and today was a particularly nasty day, my top referral was: "Secret.ɢoogle.com You are invited! Enter only with this ticket URL. Copy it. Vote for Trump!" Not the only one: http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2016/language-spam-latest-...
Comment linking /2016/language-spam-latest-google-analytics-spam/
on “Ask HN: Why can't Google stop referral spam on Google Analytics?”This is a technique called referrer spam. It's not real traffic just a way to get you as the owner of your site to visit theirs and "hopefully" purchase whatever they're trying to sell. If you wish to clean up your reports the only real way to do it is using filters[0]. Or optionally switching to a different analytics provider. [0] http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/howto-fix-ghost-traff...
Comment linking /2015/howto-fix-ghost-traffic-spam-rubbish-google-analytics/
on “Ask HN: Why do I get so much traffic from random spam websites”Just a kind of referrer spam like many other spammers did. You may check this site for instruction to remove those spam. How to Fix Ghost Traffic http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/howto-fix-ghost-traff...
Comment linking /2015/howto-fix-ghost-traffic-spam-rubbish-google-analytics
on “Ask HN: Is this a new spam on Google Analytics?”