Why Your Analytics Show Traffic from China and Singapore (and What to Do About It)

Over the past 12 to 24 months, many businesses across industries have noticed a consistent pattern in their website analytics: unexpected traffic from China and Singapore, often accompanied by low engagement, no conversions, and no commercial value.

This issue is not unique to your website. It is a global trend increasingly flagged by analytics teams, SEO specialists, hosting providers, and cloud infrastructure vendors.

In this guide, we explain:

• Why this traffic occurs
• How it affects analytics accuracy and reporting
• When traffic should be blocked entirely
• When it should be excluded from analytics only
• How to manage this safely using Google Tag Manager
• How to document changes to maintain reporting integrity

What Is Causing the Increase in China and Singapore Traffic?

In most cases, this traffic does not originate from human users.

China and Singapore are global hubs for:

• Cloud infrastructure and data centres
• AI training and crawling systems
• Automation and scraping tools
• Security scanners and monitoring software

As AI adoption accelerates, automated systems increasingly:

• Crawl websites to analyse content
• Test forms, APIs, and endpoints
• Scrape structured data
• Trigger basic page views and events

As a result, this traffic often:

• Appears as sessions and page views
• Rarely converts
• Skews engagement metrics
• Inflates geographic and channel reports

Singapore, in particular, is a major cloud routing hub. Many automated tools route traffic through Singapore even when originating elsewhere.

How This Traffic Affects Your Analytics and Reports

If unmanaged, automated traffic can distort key metrics such as:

• Sessions and users by country
• Engagement rate and average session duration
• Conversion rates
• Funnel and attribution analysis
• SEO performance benchmarks

This can lead to:

• Incorrect assumptions about audience behaviour
• Misguided marketing decisions
• Confusion when comparing month-on-month performance
• Time wasted investigating non-existent leads

Importantly, this traffic does not consume paid advertising budgets unless you are actively targeting these regions.

Two Ways to Handle the Problem

There are two valid approaches, depending on business impact.

Option A: Block the Traffic at Server Level

When to Choose This Option

• High volumes of spam form submissions
• Fake or low-quality leads affecting sales teams
• Server resources or site performance are impacted
• You want to actively prevent access from certain regions

How Server-Level Blocking Works

Traffic is blocked before it reaches your website using:

• Cloudflare
• A Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Firewall or Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules

These tools can:

• Block traffic by country
• Apply CAPTCHA challenges
• Filter known bot patterns
• Rate-limit suspicious behaviour

Key Considerations

• This is a technical, infrastructure-level change
• Requires configuration and testing
• Best used when there is a clear operational issue

Option B: Exclude the Traffic From Analytics (Recommended First Step)

When to Choose This Option

• No spam leads or operational impact
• Site performance is unaffected
• The primary issue is reporting accuracy

This is the most common and recommended approach.

How Analytics Exclusion Works

Instead of blocking access, you:

• Allow the site to load normally
• Prevent analytics tools from recording visits from selected countries
• Keep reports accurate and decision-ready

This is implemented using Google Tag Manager before data reaches Google Analytics 4.

How to Exclude China and Singapore Traffic Using Google Tag Manager

This approach ensures GA4 and Looker Studio remain aligned without server-level changes.

Step 1: Detect the Visitor's Country (GeoIP Tag)

A lightweight script runs on page load to identify the visitor's country code (for example, CN or SG).

Steps

1. Open Google Tag Manager
2. Select the correct GTM container
3. Create a new tag
4. Choose Custom HTML
5. Name the tag: GeoIP – Country Detection
6. Paste the script below
7. Set the trigger to All Pages
8. Save the tag

Script (paste exactly as shown)

Step 2: Store the Country as a Variable

Create a reusable variable inside Google Tag Manager.

Steps

1. Go to Variables
2. Create a new variable
3. Select Custom JavaScript
4. Name it: Visitor Country
5. Paste the code below
6. Save the variable

Variable Code

function()

Step 3: Create the Block Trigger

This trigger identifies traffic from China or Singapore.

Steps

1. Go to Triggers
2. Create a new trigger
3. Name it: Block GA4 – China & Singapore
4. Choose Page View
5. Select Some Page Views
6. Add the condition below
7. Save the trigger

Trigger Condition

• Variable: }
• Operator: matches RegEx
• Value: ^(CN|SG)$

Step 4: Apply the Trigger as an Exception on GA4

1. Open your GA4 Configuration tag
2. Confirm it fires on All Pages
3. Under Exceptions, add Block GA4 – China & Singapore
4. Save the tag

From this point forward:

• GA4 will not record data from China or Singapore
• Historical data remains unchanged
• SEO and paid ads are unaffected

Step 5: Preview and Publish

• Use GTM Preview mode to confirm tags fire correctly
• Publish with the version name:
  GA4 geo exclusion – CN & SG

Recommended Post-Implementation Checks

GA4 Annotation

Document the following in GA4:

• Date of change
• Countries excluded
• Exclusion method (GTM level)

Looker Studio Dashboard Note

Explain:

• When exclusions were applied
• Why historical data may still show China and Singapore

GA4 Exploration Verification

Create a simple exploration filtered to China and Singapore to confirm no new data is recorded.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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Final Recommendation

For most businesses, excluding China and Singapore traffic from analytics is sufficient and should be the first step. Server-level blocking should only be implemented when there is clear operational impact.

Need Help Cleaning Up Your Analytics?

At BlueMagnet, we help businesses:

• Audit GA4 and Google Tag Manager setups
• Resolve data quality and bot traffic issues
• Implement clean geo-exclusions
• Build accurate GA4 and Looker Studio dashboards

If you need help implementing this or auditing your analytics setup, get in touch and let our analytics specialists help you turn noisy data into clear, decision-ready insight.