Localhost:4444 Showing Up in Google Analytics

[Robert-B]

Hello All,

Lately in my Google Analytics account I have noticed a referral source labelled:

localhost:4444

The number of visits is really high from this source, but I have no idea (no clue!) what it actually means.

Can anyone shed some light on what this is about?

Should I be creating some sort of filter to screen out this as a referral source (assuming it is not legitimate)?

Many thanks in advance.

Cheers!

[Robert-B]

Thanks for the response guys. I certainly appreciate your help.

It definitely sounds like this is not "real" traffic... whether it's a backup service or our web development team.

I am, however, a bit confused.

I know we are running backup software on our server (we're paranoid about backups!), but I don't understand why that would trigger a visit in Google Analytics.

The backup software (as far as I know) is copying files to our backup server so it would never really visit the page to trigger the on-page Google Analytics code.

This could be the result of my web-development team previewing pages with the Google Analytics code from their local machine.

Under the assumption that my best move is to create a filter to block this traffic, would that filter just be:

Exclude | traffic from the domains | that are equal to |

Domain = localhost

Or would I need to put: localhost:4444

Or can I put: localhost:* (as a wildcard to block all localhosts)

Thanks in advance. I'll totally create the filter right away once I know how to do it properly.

[StreamlineMetrics]

Usually localhost referrals are from internal networks, likely from your web development team. You can create a filter to block out your internal IP address. Or you could use a Chrome extension to block yourself from showing up in your Analytics - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fadgflmigmogfionelcpalhohefbnehm

[DougRoberts]

It's probably worth speaking to your hosting provide to find out what services are running on your server. I'm guessing a bit, but I'm thinking it's probably some kind of backup / sync service...

If your hosting company does indeed say that it's a legitimate service then yes, you do want to filter these out of your google analytics.

Do you have a local version of your website hosted on your own machine (still with the analytics code live?)

Your best bet is to create a new profile (so you can always go back to your "normal" profile" and filter out traffic from the localhost domain.

Profile filters will only affect data going forward, not existing data. If you're trying to filter existing data, make an advanced segment to exclude "Source" containing localhost:4444.