I read that and it says most people are only getting 3 visits a day. Im getting 100 website visits. im a small business so its really messing up my analytics
Topic summary
Store owners are experiencing unusually high website traffic from Council Bluffs, Iowa—ranging from 3 to 100+ daily visits—that distorts their analytics and inflates metrics for paid services like Trusted Site.
Root Cause:
Shopify representatives confirm this traffic originates from Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, used for speed testing, indexing, and routing Google services (search, Chrome data-saving). The visits don’t represent actual customers but automated crawling by Shopify/Google systems. Some users report increased activity after theme updates (e.g., Dawn 15.3).
Workarounds Provided:
- Filter Analytics Reports: Create custom reports excluding Council Bluffs by setting “Session City” to “is not Council Bluffs” and replacing default dashboard reports
- SQL Queries: Use custom SQL filters to exclude Council Bluffs (and other bot hubs like Ashburn, Boardman) from session counts and bounce rate calculations
Ongoing Issues:
- Shopify support inconsistently acknowledges the problem; some agents deny it’s speed testing
- No official fix exists to prevent these visits from being counted
- The issue has persisted since at least 2020 with no resolution
The discussion remains open as users seek better solutions beyond manual filtering.
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