Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports have recently been showing a sudden, massive spike in visitors from China and Singapore for many websites. This anomaly has been reported since late 2024 by website owners worldwide, ranging from small personal blogs to large e-commerce platforms, but seems to have become more widespread at the end of 2025. While a surge in traffic usually calls for celebration, this particular trend is causing more headaches than high-fives.
So What’s Happening?
The short term increase in visitor activity is characterised by “Direct” traffic originating primarily from Singapore and Lanzhou, China. It’s been widely reported as not real users, often appearing in the Direct channel with very low engagement (quick bounces, few events) and bypassing standard filters, likely from large data centres in those regions.
Despite the impressive numbers, these sessions share a suspicious ‘fingerprint’.
- Near-zero engagement: Average session durations are often 0–3 seconds.
- Missing server logs: In many cases, these hits appear in GA4 but not in your website’s actual server logs, suggesting “ghost traffic” that pings your tracking ID without ever loading your site.
Why is GA4 Failing to Block It?
Industry experts and Google product specialists have confirmed that this is inauthentic, non-human traffic. These are more likely to be sophisticated bots or AI-driven scrapers designed to bypass GA4’s standard filters. Whether they are scanning for vulnerabilities, training AI models, or simply ‘scraping’ content, they mimic human measurement signals just enough to slip through the cracks.
The Problem with Fake Data
While these bots aren’t necessarily ‘hacking’ your website, they are polluting the data. Distorted metrics make it impossible to calculate accurate conversion rates, assess true user behaviour, or report genuine ROI. For businesses in regional markets, having 60% of the traffic suddenly come from Lanzhou makes geographic reporting useless.
How to Fix It
Google is reportedly working on a permanent fix, but until then, it’s necessary to take manual action, including adding an annotation to identify the affected period and also to try the following techniques where possible:
1. Use Segments: Create a segment in GA4 to use in the standard reports or in Explorations to exclude sessions from China and Singapore with low engagement.
2. Firewall Blocking: Use tools like Cloudflare to block or challenge traffic from these specific regions if you don’t do business there.
3. GTM Filters: Implement triggers in Google Tag Manager to prevent the GA4 tag from firing when the user’s location matches the suspicious IP ranges.
By identifying and filtering this ‘noise’ it’s possible to regain a clear, honest view of your website’s performance.
If you want to know more about how to filter out spam traffic in GA4 to maintain the integrity of your GA4 data, please get in touch.