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How to Fix the China & Singapore Bot Issue
December 31, 2025
- First Published: December 31, 2025
- Last Modified: January 2, 2026
If you have looked at your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data recently and noticed a bizarre surge in traffic originating from China or Singapore, you aren’t imagining things.
Starting around mid-September, many marketing managers began spotting this anomaly.
It isn’t a sudden rush of brand interest from Asia; it has been confirmed as a widespread bot attack. While bot traffic is nothing new, this specific wave is proving particularly nuisance-some because it is bypassing standard exclusions, leaving your engagement metrics in a mess.
It is frustrating, isn’t it? You go to report on monthly performance, and suddenly your session duration has tanked, and your user numbers are inflated.
Here is exactly what is happening, why Google’s standard filters missed it, and the steps you can take to tidy up your data.
Table of Contents
Official Thread
This is a known issue from Google – and there is a thread on the official forum that discusses this.
The Bot Traffic
Before you start applying filters, you need to be certain this is indeed the specific bot issue we are discussing.
While the traffic location (China or Singapore) is the biggest clue, you should look for specific “fingerprints” in the user behaviour to confirm it is illegitimate.
Look for these engagement anomalies:
- Zero Scroll Events: The “users” are not scrolling down the page at all.
- No Interactions: No clicks, no video plays, no file downloads.
- Short Duration: Session duration is typically less than ten seconds.
- Single Page Views: They arrive, do nothing, and leave.
- The 404 Landing: We are seeing a high volume of these visits registering as landing directly on 404 error pages.
This combination of factors skews your data significantly.
It lowers your overall engagement rate, distorts your geographic reporting, and, if you are on an enterprise plan, it can artificially inflate GA360 billing.
Why Didn’t GA4 Block This Automatically?
Usually, GA4 is quite good at filtering out known crawlers and spiders.
So, how did this slip through?
According to Google’s internal findings, this surge is linked to a new category of bot traffic designed specifically to bypass standard filtering systems.
These bots are capable of generating measurement signals that mimic basic user behaviour just enough to appear “human” on the surface.
They don’t look like your standard crawler, but they lack the deeper interaction signals that accompany real browsing.
Google has stated they are actively tackling the root cause and developing a long-term fix, but until then, we need a workaround.
How to Clean Up Your Data
Since we cannot wait for a global patch, here are the three approaches you can take to mitigate the damage.
Segmentation in ‘Explore’
This is the most precise method for cleaning up your historical analysis without risking your raw data collection.
You can create a segment to exclude this specific traffic pattern and apply it to your Exploration reports.
The Strategy: Identify patterns where high traffic from a specific country (China/Singapore) is paired with near-zero engagement.
- Open your Explore tab
- Create a new Segment
- Set the condition to exclude traffic where Country contains “China” OR “Singapore”.
- Optional: You can refine this by adding an “AND” condition for another signal e.g. Broswer Version
The Caveat: This only cleans up your data within the Explore section. It won’t retroactively fix the standard reports in your dashboard. And the segment can’t be applied within the Report section.
The Report Section
If your business focuses purely on the UK, US, or Europe, and you know that traffic from China or Singapore is rarely valuable to you, you can take a broader approach.
In your reporting (whether that is within GA4 library reports or Looker Studio), you can simply filter out those countries entirely. This doesn’t stop the data from being collected, but it removes the noise from the reports you show to stakeholders.
Audience
You can build an audience with the same conditions as your segment to filter this traffic out. But this isn't retroactive.
The Technical Approach: Blocking at the Source
For those who want to stop the traffic before it even hits the site, there are more aggressive steps available.
- Server-Side Blocking: You can block specific countries via your hosting provider.
- CDN Filtering: Using firewall rules in tools like Cloudflare to filter out traffic at the CDN level.
Warning: This is a sledgehammer approach. Blocking entire countries at the server level will prevent all traffic from those regions, including potential legitimate customers. Only use this if you are absolutely certain you have no business interests in those locations.
Summary
This bot spike is annoying, but it is manageable. By recognizing the pattern—high volume, low engagement, specific geolocations—you can isolate the bad data and ensure your reporting remains accurate. Google is working on a more permanent solution, but for now, using segments in your Exploration reports is your safest bet for accurate analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this bot traffic increase my GA360 bill?
Potentially, yes. Because these bots trigger session start events, they count towards billable hits. It is worth monitoring your hit volume and speaking to your reseller if you see a significant discrepancy.
Can I delete the bot data from GA4 permanently?
No, GA4 does not allow you to delete specific historical data points once they are processed. Your best option is to use segments or filters to exclude this traffic from your analysis and reporting views.
Why do these bots land on 404 pages?
These bots often attempt to access known vulnerabilities or non-existent file paths to test server security. When they request a page that doesn’t exist, your site returns a 404 error, which GA4 records as the landing page.
Is there a setting in GA4 to block all bots?
GA4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders (this is a built-in feature that cannot be turned off). However, sophisticated bots that mimic human behaviour, like this recent wave from China and Singapore, can sometimes bypass these automatic filters.
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Author
Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!
I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.