Thanks for filtering out other hostnames

So I log in to Google Analytics today to take a look around, and I see the traffic for my personal site is up 800%! WTF?! I'm on Clicky throughout the day and have ClickyChrome right there in my browser all the time, how on earth could I miss such a spike? I'd know within a minute if something like this really happened.

Well, someone was using some code from a demo of mine on their homepage, and they had gotten some good press last week. They somehow managed to not realize they copied my Clicky and GA code as well, so all their traffic was reported in my GA account! Clicky however was not duped.

That gave me a good laugh :) So thanks Clicky, for only reporting my real traffic the whole time.

You're welcome, but... I can't believe Google doesn't do any kind of domain validation? Is it really that easy to "trick" their reporting just by installing someone else's code on your own web site?

Apparently. I never paid much attention to the hostname section before, but I just now noticed another smaller-traffic site is using the same animation script on their homepage too, with my code, being counted in my analytics.

Wow- something similar was happening to my domain - www.visitsouthcarolina.net as well - this is why I have not logged into GA for over a week but check clicky every couple of hours :)

I still can't believe Google does this. It seems ridiculous.

http://getclicky.com/blog/229/why-clicky-validates-your-traffic