If your Google Analytics dashboard suddenly thinks Singapore is your biggest market, check the numbers before celebrating.
Search Engine Watch saw the pattern firsthand on September 18. In one GA4 Realtime snapshot, 365 of 419 active users were reported as being in Singapore, with desktop accounting for more than 85% of users.
The pattern is showing up elsewhere too.
A September 2 investigation by developer Ken Imoto found Singapore sessions had increased ninefold in a day. The traffic had a 0% engagement rate, averaged just 0.5 seconds per session, and 99% arrived as Chrome users on Windows desktop. Nearly all also reported the same screen resolution.
Shopify merchants have been seeing similar activity. One merchant reported in early September that traffic had reached as many as 80,000 visitors from Singapore in a single day. Another August report said Singapore traffic had inflated normal traffic levels by as much as 20 to 30 times during previous bot waves.
The problem appears to be continuing this week. On September 17, a Shopify merchant said the platform was classifying roughly 74% of a large Singapore traffic spike as bots, while claiming the remaining activity also appeared designed to resemble human browsing.
Reports of suspicious Singapore and China traffic have also appeared repeatedly in Google’s own Analytics community, including new complaints this summer.
Our take
The interesting part is no longer simply that bot traffic exists. It is that some of it is making its way far enough through the stack to pollute analytics dashboards.
A sudden Singapore boom might be great news. But if hundreds of desktop users appear simultaneously without the conversions, referrals or engagement to match, perhaps hold off on opening the Singapore bureau.
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