The “Ghost Traffic” that Distorted Your 2025 Reports

Did your traffic in GA4 jump at the end of December 2025? You’re not alone. Essentially every website got hit with bot traffic from China and Singapore — typically spiking right around December 15. It isn’t necessarily harmful; it just slipped through Google Analytics’ filters and is characterized by extremely low engagement rates and time on site. Hop in your Google Analytics and go to Reports > User > User Attributes > Demographic details to see if your GA4 was affected.

Unsurprisingly, with such bad engagement figures, you’re going to want to filter it out to avoid have inauthentic and inaccurate data dragging down your stellar 2025 web traffic. Unfortunately, Google Analytics 4 data is a one-way street. There’s not a way to go back and re-write or delete data. So, I’ll show you how to filter it.

Luckily, it’s really straight forward. On any report in GA4, simply go to “Add filter” at the top, and then go over to the right, where it says “Build filter”. Under “Dimension”, search for “Country” and click it. Then, under “Match Type”, select “does not exactly match”. Next, under “Value”, select “China” and “Singapore”. Finally, click “Apply” at the button, and — voilà! You’ve successfully filtered out China and Singapore. Just be sure to make this filter each time you’re looking at it. There are more advanced, repeatable ways to do it, but this is the quick and dirty.