if you dig into the original report https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/council-bluffs-visits/m-p/953848#M209517 you will see others also experiencing the same figures as you. And like those people Shopify won’t do anything to help you. I mean that goes back to 2020 when Shopify actually had customer support, these days all most of us get are chatbots when we reach out.
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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