In short. GA4 automatically excludes known bot traffic, with no option to disable the exclusion or view the excluded volume.
Definition: Yes. As of 17 October 2026, Google Analytics automatically excludes traffic identified as coming from known bots and spiders. This known-bot exclusion cannot be switched off, and Analytics provides no count of the traffic it excludes.
Key facts
- Google's known bot-traffic documentation identifies Google research and the International Spiders and Bots List as inputs to bot identification.
- Google's Data filters documentation lists configurable filters for developer traffic, internal traffic and web hostname traffic.
- Apache's access-log documentation describes a server record of processed requests, including a format that records the client-reported user agent.
How does the automatic exclusion work?
Google's Known bot-traffic exclusion describes an automatic property-level behavior covering known bots and spiders. Identification combines Google's research with the International Spiders and Bots List. Google describes the exclusion as keeping known-bot events out of Analytics data to the extent possible.
The documented scope is traffic recognized as coming from known bots. Google provides neither a switch for retaining that excluded traffic nor a displayed total of the excluded traffic.
Which filtering controls can a property owner configure?
A data filter excludes incoming event data from Analytics processing. Google's Data filters documentation describes internal-traffic filtering by IP address or address range, developer-traffic filtering for activity using debug mode, and web-hostname filtering for excluded domains supplying property events.
These controls address their specified traffic categories. The automatic known-bot exclusion has the configuration limits described above. Applying an exclusion data filter permanently removes the matching incoming data from processing; the same documentation says that data remains unavailable in both Google Analytics and BigQuery.
Data filters operate from their creation onward and leave historical data unchanged. For hiding data in selected reports while retaining the underlying data, Google points to report filters.
Where can crawler requests be inspected?
A server access log is a record of requests processed by a web server. Apache's Log Files documentation provides this Combined Log Format configuration:
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\"" combined
CustomLog "log/access_log" combined
The format records the request line and response status, together with the referring-page header and user-agent header. A user agent is identifying information supplied by the client about itself. Apache uses LogFormat to define the fields and CustomLog to select the log destination and format.
Related terms
- Server log analysis
- How do I exclude agency test visits from GA4 reports?
- How do I record crawler user agents in Apache access logs?
FAQ
Can I turn off known-bot exclusion to count crawler visits?
No. Google's known-bot documentation says you cannot disable the exclusion or view the amount excluded.
Does a new data filter change earlier reports?
No. Google's Data filters documentation says filters apply from creation forward. Historical data remains unchanged.
Sources
- Google Analytics Help, "Known bot-traffic exclusion", undated
- Google Analytics Help, "Data filters", undated
- Apache HTTP Server documentation, "Log Files", undated
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