Lately, while checking friends’ analytics, I came across random surges in traffic. At first I got really excited that they are getting so much traffic.
Refferal traffic is really valuable, and I was already working on how to convert that traffic into revenue. That is until i started digging deeper.
Turns out, most of that traffic was spam.
Sometimes analytics can be deceiving. You think you have lots of traffic:
But then you look closer, and you will find that all that referral traffic is spam:
Referral spam is plaguing site owners around the world. It makes it look like you have more hits than you do, which can throw off your entire marketing strategy if you are unaware of it.
If you are seeing some traffic from odd sites that you don’t recognize, then that is probably spam. This doesn’t mean you are hacked or being targeted. This phenomenon happens to almost every site on the web. While it’s relatively harmless for your website, it can throw your numbers out of whack, when it comes to marketing.
Luckily there is a way to filter out the noise, so you can once more, have accurate numbers you can count on.
What is Referral spam?
Referral spam consists of fake website hits.
Usually, weird looking sites with 100% bounce rates are refferer spam. In the above example it’s buttons-for-website.com and make-money-online.7makemoneyonline.com
Here, we can see semalt.semalt.com and again, buttons-for-website.com. In this unfortunate case, more than 50% of the traffic is spam. These results are so skewed, you’d think this site has a 40% bounce rate, when in fact, it is only 4%.
Option1: Create Filters
Google Analytics has a feature built-in, which will allow you to filter out the spam, by creating filters. You need to keep in mind two things though: you need to keep these filters updates, as new spam sites appear daily.
- First, gather all the spam domains in a list. You can spot them by looking at Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals, then sort the list by bounce rates. You are looking for domains with 100% bounce rates and non-existent session time.
- Block all the spam domains by creating a new filter.
Here’s how to do it:
- Head over to the Admin section of your account.
- Click on “All Filters”, then click on Add Filter.
- Give your filter a name, such as “Domain Spam”, make sure “custom” is selected. Set the filter field to “Campaign Source“
- Now you can enter your domain names in the “Filter Pattern” field. There is a special way to do this.
The pattern will look like this:domain.|domain.For example for spamsite and yourspamhere websites, you would enterspamsite.|yourspamhere. - Here is a list of common spam referrers, compiled by Brian Clifton: offer|free|share|mercedes|buy|cheap|semalt|googlsucks|benz|sl500|hulfington|buttons|darodar|pistonheads|motor|money|blackhat|backlink|webrank|seo|phd|crawler|anonymous|d{3}.*forum|porn|webmaster|flipboard|fl.ru|mbca|ahrefs|game|.io|^sex|^video
- Create another list with the following as a pattern: dailyrank|100dollars-seo|semalt|anticrawler|sitevaluation|buttons-for-website|buttons-for-your-website|-musicas*-gratis|best-seo-offer|best-seo-solution|savetubevideo|ranksonic|offers.bycontext|7makemoneyonline|kambasoft|medispainstitute
- And one more with the following pattern: 127.0.0.1|justprofit.xyz|nexus.search-helper.ru|rankings-analytics.com|videos-for-your-business|adviceforum.info|video—production|success-seo|sharemyfile.ru|seo-platform|dbutton.net|wordpress-crew.net|rankscanner|doktoronline.no|o00.in
Option 2: Block Spam bots from getting to your website
[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”warning” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-exclamation”]This method is a little more involved and requires you to edit the .htaccess file. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, ask your webmaster to make these changes.
This is a little more involved, and involves editing your .htaccess file. The best way to achieve this is to edit the .htaccess file through the terminal, but you can also use the FTP interface or file browser, depending on what access you have to your hosting.
- locate the .htaccess file, and make a copy of it.
If you have root access, you can use the following command within the web root of your sitecp .htaccess .htaccess.old
- Add the following section to your .htaccess file (courtesy of MOZ.com): # Block Russian Referrer Spam RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly.com/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly..ru/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly.org/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly.info/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*iloveitaly.ru/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*econom.co/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*savetubevideo.com/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*kambasoft.com/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*buttons-for-website.com/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*semalt.com/ [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*darodar.com/ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]