Introduction

If you’re a Shopify merchant, you may have noticed recurring daily visits from “Council Bluffs, Iowa” in your store’s analytics. These visits often occur three at a time and seem perplexing, especially if your business doesn’t operate near that location. Many merchants suspect these visitors are bots, raising concerns about security and analytics accuracy.

This article explores the cause of these unusual visitors, why they occur, their impact on your Shopify store, and how to manage or minimize their effect on your analytics. Let’s dive in!

What Are “Council Bluffs Visitors”?

The recurring visitors from Council Bluffs, Iowa, are not customers or malicious bots. Instead, they are part of Shopify’s automated Speed Report system. Shopify runs daily tests to assess the speed and performance of your website. These tests are conducted using Google Developer tools, and the data center responsible for this task is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Each test typically consists of three simultaneous visits to three key pages of your site:

• Your homepage
• A popular product page
• A popular collection page

The goal of these tests is to benchmark your store’s speed against similar Shopify stores and provide recommendations for performance improvements.

Why Does This Happen?

Shopify uses Google’s data centers to simulate user interactions on your store and gather speed metrics. The testing process involves:

1. Sending automated visits from Council Bluffs, Iowa (the location of Google’s data center).
2. Analyzing the speed and performance of three selected pages.
3. Comparing your results to other Shopify stores to generate a Speed Report.

These tests are run daily by default, and while they are harmless, they can inflate visitor counts, affect analytics, and create confusion if you’re unaware of their purpose.

How It Impacts Your Store

While the Shopify Speed Report aims to help improve your store’s performance, it can have unintended side effects:

• Analytics Accuracy: The test visits may inflate your total visitor count, skewing data on conversion rates, bounce rates, and traffic sources.
• Confusion: Recurring visits from a single location can make merchants suspect malicious bots or spyware.
• Reporting Issues: For smaller stores with limited traffic, these automated visits can significantly impact overall metrics, creating a misleading picture of your site’s performance.

Steps to Handle Shopify Speed Tests

Here are actionable steps you can take to manage the effects of Shopify’s Speed Report tests:

1. Contact Shopify Support: If these visits are significantly disrupting your analytics, reach out to Shopify Support. Request an option to adjust or disable the frequency of these tests.
2. Exclude Test Visits in Analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics to filter out traffic from Council Bluffs, Iowa. This ensures that your reports exclude these automated visits.
3. Monitor Traffic Patterns: Keep track of recurring visits from other suspicious locations, such as Ashburn, Virginia, which is another common data center location for automated testing.
4. Provide Feedback: Advocate for more control over the Speed Report feature. Many merchants have requested Shopify to offer settings for manual or less frequent testing.

How to Improve Analytics Accuracy

To minimize the impact of automated visits on your Shopify analytics, follow these tips:

• Filter Traffic by IP: Use Google Analytics or another analytics tool to exclude traffic from the IP ranges associated with Google’s Council Bluffs data center.
• Identify Patterns: Look for repeated patterns in visitor behavior, such as consistent timing, pages visited, and source location. Use this information to set up filters.
• Focus on Real Customers: Use analytics segments to isolate and analyze traffic from genuine customers. This ensures you’re basing decisions on accurate, actionable data.
• Implement Tag Management: Use tools like Google Tag Manager to refine how you track visitors and exclude irrelevant bot traffic.

Conclusion

The recurring visits from Council Bluffs, Iowa, are part of Shopify’s Speed Report system, designed to test your site’s performance. While these tests are harmless, they can skew analytics and cause confusion for store owners. Understanding their purpose and taking steps to filter or manage their impact will help you maintain accurate reporting and focus on optimizing your store’s performance.

If this issue significantly affects your store, don’t hesitate to reach out to Shopify Support and provide feedback on the Speed Report feature. Together, we can advocate for improvements that benefit all Shopify merchants.

FAQs

• What are Council Bluffs visitors?
  These are automated visits from Shopify’s Speed Report system, which tests your site’s performance using Google data centers in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
• Are these visits harmful?
  No, they are not harmful. However, they can affect your analytics by inflating visitor counts and skewing conversion rates.
• Can I stop these tests?
  Currently, Shopify does not offer an option to disable these tests, but you can request this feature by contacting Shopify Support.
• How can I exclude these visits from my analytics?
  Use Google Analytics to filter traffic from Council Bluffs, Iowa, or set up IP-based filters to exclude automated visits.
• What other locations might these bots originate from?
  Other common locations include Ashburn, Virginia, which is another major data center used for automated testing.