In late 2025, many website owners, marketers, and analytics professionals began noticing a sudden and unexplained surge in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) traffic originating from Singapore and China. For some sites, these sessions appeared harmless; for others, they dramatically skewed metrics and caused confusion in reports.
This blog post breaks down what’s happening, why it matters, and how you can protect the accuracy of your analytics data.
The Problem: Sudden Spikes in GA4 Traffic
Starting around mid to late 2025, GA4 users across multiple industries reported unexpected increases in sessions attributed to visitors from Singapore and China. The spikes often appeared abruptly and continued daily or weekly.
Common Characteristics Reported
- High bounce rates (often close to 100%)
- Very low engagement time, sometimes 0 seconds
- Single-page visits, usually to the homepage
- Inconsistent or missing matching server logs, making it unclear whether real visits occurred
- Repeated patterns of the same city or device types
Many SEO and analytics professionals suspect that this traffic is not human, but instead some form of automated or bot activity triggering GA4 measurement events.
Why This Is Happening
Several theories have emerged as the pattern became more widely discussed:
1. Bot or Automated Traffic
Evidence suggests these may be non-human visits that trigger GA4 events without fully loading site resources. This could include scrapers, spam bots, or automated tools.
2. AI Crawlers or Indexing Bots
Some believe newer types of AI-driven crawlers may be responsible. These crawlers scan pages but don’t behave like traditional bots, triggering analytics without generating normal server traffic.
3. Invalid Traffic Growth in APAC
Reports in 2025 showed that bot and invalid traffic rates are high in the Asia-Pacific region, specifically in mobile and programmatic environments. This could make Singapore and China more common sources of abnormal signals.
Why This Matters
For digital marketers, agencies, and businesses, this influx of questionable traffic creates several issues:
1. Distorted Analytics Data
Inflated session counts, high bounce rates, and lower average engagement can make your reports unreliable.
2. Misleading SEO or Marketing Decisions
Interpreting this traffic as genuine user interest can send your strategy in the wrong direction.
3. Compromised Client Reporting
For agencies (including WordPress agencies using GA4 for Care Plan clients), unexplained spikes can confuse clients or make performance look artificially poor.
How to Diagnose the Issue
If you suspect unwanted traffic from Singapore or China, here’s how to investigate:
1. Segment by Country and City
In GA4, filter by region and look for irregular patterns.
2. Review Engagement Metrics
Bots typically have:
- 0–3 second engagement times
- 100% bounce rates
- 1 page per session
3. Compare Against Server Logs or WAF Logs
If your analytics shows traffic but your hosting logs, Cloudflare, or firewall do not, it’s likely “ghost traffic.”
4. Check for IP or User Agent Patterns
Repeated IP ranges or identical user agents across multiple sessions is a common red flag.
How to Deal With It
1. Create Filtered Views in GA4
While GA4 does not support traditional views like UA did, you can still build:
- Custom comparisons
- Filtered explorations
- Segments to exclude suspicious traffic
2. Block Suspicious IP Ranges at the Server or CDN Level
Using tools like Cloudflare, you can:
- Block specific IPs or ASNs
- Challenge visits using JavaScript or CAPTCHA
- Rate-limit high-frequency bot traffic
3. Use Server-Side Tagging (SST)
Routing analytics through a secure server environment reduces the risk of fake measurement events.
4. Maintain a Clean Reporting Dashboard
Create a client-friendly or internal report that excludes known bot traffic, preserving cleaner KPIs.
What Website Owners and Marketers Should Do Now
- Review your recent GA4 data for spikes in Asia-based traffic.
- Compare traffic against server logs or Cloudflare.
- Create segments to isolate and monitor suspicious patterns.
- Set up WAF or CDN-level filters if needed.
- Communicate with clients (if you’re an agency) about the issue to prevent confusion.
Final Thoughts
The GA4 traffic surge from Singapore and China in late 2025 appears to be part of a broader rise in automated and invalid traffic. While the visits are unlikely to be harmful, they can make analytics data unreliable if not identified and filtered. By using the steps above, you can maintain cleaner reporting and avoid making decisions based on misleading signals.
If you need help reviewing your analytics setup or filtering this noise from your reports, feel free to get in touch – especially if you manage WordPress sites where accurate tracking is essential.
