Why do I have so many sessions from out of my country?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A Shopify store owner in Sweden noticed unusually high session counts from Council Bluffs, Iowa (510 sessions) compared to Swedish cities like Stockholm (41 sessions).

Root Cause:

  • These sessions originate from Shopify’s automated speed testing using Google tools (likely Lighthouse)
  • Google’s data center performing these tests is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa
  • This is standard Shopify behavior and the sessions should be ignored

Solution Provided:
To exclude Council Bluffs traffic from analytics:

  1. Navigate to Analytics dashboard in Shopify
  2. Select reports showing visits/sessions
  3. Apply filter: Session City “is not” Council Bluffs
  4. Save filtered reports with new names
  5. Replace original reports on dashboard

Note: Apply this filter to session-related reports only; leave sales reports unchanged. Community members suggest Shopify should automatically exclude this data to prevent analytics pollution.

Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello,

I am having a problem where I see I have a lot of sessions from outside of sweden. (which is the only place I sell).

I have 510 sessions from “Iowa, Council Bluffs” but not nearly as many from any city in sweden. (I have 41 from stockholm)

Does anyone know why this is? Thankful for any answers!

2

Here is a link to a previous discussion explaining this.

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/council-bluffs-visits/m-p/953848#M209517

Long story short, Shopify uses a google tool (Lighthouse maybe) to determine its Shopify speed score and the google data center is base in Council Bluffs, Iowa. These session details should be ignored. Would be nice to see Shopify automatically ignore these as to not pollute user data in the future.

3

If you’re seeing visits from Council Bluffs in your Shopify analytics (likely from Shopify’s speed testing using Google Developer tools), here’s how to exclude them:

  1. Go to the Analytics menu in Shopify, and you will see the dashboard with your reports.
  2. Select any report that includes visits (e.g., Sessions over time, Sessions by location).
  3. Apply a filter: Set Session City to “is not” Council Bluffs.
  4. Save the report with a new name (e.g., “Sessions over time (No Council Bluffs)”).
  5. Replace the original report on the dashboard with the new filtered version to view accurate data.

Repeat this for all relevant reports, such as sessions, conversions, or landing pages. Leave sales-related reports unchanged. Your dashboard will now display only real-user sessions without the Council Bluffs data.