Increase in US traffic after implementing Stape server-side GTM

Server Google Analytics
1

Hi all,

Since setting up server-side tagging through Stape, we’ve noticed a significant increase in traffic/sessions attributed to US IP addresses. This is unexpected, as the company in question only serves customers in the Netherlands.

Setup:

  • Website: www.multicopy.nl

  • Server-side GTM via Stape, with a custom (first-party) subdomain / same-origin setup in place

What we’ve ruled out:

  • No IP overwrites or manipulation happening in either the client-side or server-side GTM containers

  • No other configuration changes were made around the time this started

Question:
Could this be caused by something on Stape’s side (e.g. proxying, load balancing, or how the server container handles/reports client IPs), or is there another likely explanation we should be checking? Has anyone else run into unexplained US IP traffic after moving to server-side tagging with Stape?

Any pointers on where to look next (specific logs, headers to check, etc.) would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Screenshot:
Dark blue: Netherlands

Light blue: USA

image
image1078×995 28 KB

2

Hi Jack,

I see that you’ve configured requests to be proxied to the standard Stape subdomain rather than your custom domain. That’s likely why outgoing requests are using the Cloudflare server’s IP address. Everything looks fine with the IP addresses in the incoming requests.

Please make sure you haven’t forgotten to configure Request Header Transform Rule:

3

Hi Dmytro,

Thank you for your response. Is there also documentation for when NGIX is in use instead of Cloudflare?

Thank you in advance.

4

Config is similar to Same origin. How to Use Same Origin Through Nginx | Stape

add:

proxy_set_header X-From-Cdn "cf-stape";
proxy_set_header CF-Connecting-Ip $remote_addr; #If you do not use Cloudflare for your domain
#proxy_set_header CF-Connecting-Ip $http_cf_connecting_ip; #If you use Cloudflare for your domain