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czmudzin
Level 3
March 3, 2026
Question

Email scanners inflating Analytics traffic

  • March 3, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 19 views

After a promo email went out, we got a huge spike from Microsoft-based IPs. I believe we got about 300K UV in 4 hours, so it’s likely from their email scanners. This seems like an old problem that is popping up again in 2026. Does anyone have a way to mitigate reporting this traffic as UVs? We’re using Cloudflare, but they even bypassed that.

2 replies

kaush1889
kaush1889
Level 2
March 3, 2026

If you by any chance know the IPs for the Microsoft bot, you can add them in BOT Rules.

 

Otherwise, you can create segment to exclude this traffic from your dashboards. If you tagged the Promo Emails, you should have Tracking Code or any other dimension available for filtering/excluding this traffic.

    C
    czmudzinAuthor
    Level 3
    March 3, 2026

    Yeah, I think this is what we are doing, I’m just worried about a long term approach and how to not create manual filters / add ongoing IPs in the future.

    kaush1889
    kaush1889
    Level 2
    March 3, 2026

    We have notification emails tagged for one implementation and we pass one dimention with specific prefix that identifies the traffic as Notification Email traffic. That is always excluded from web analytics reporting.

      suchindrakala
      suchindrakala
      Level 1
      March 3, 2026

      You can create an automated rule that would exclude traffic coming in from certain user agents or IPs based on certain conditions like page view to visit ration (if it 100%, it’s a good indication of bot traffic). Also you can write an automation script that runs every day or week to exclude bots based on certain rules.

       

      I have implemented something similar and can provide more detail if you need.  

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