Referral Analytics Spam | Ways and Tricks to Stop it

Did you witnessed a sudden rise in your traffic in Google Analytics. And most of the time it is due to increase in Referral Traffic. Referrals like "motherboard.vice.com", "lifehacĸer.com", "reddit.com", "semalt.com", "buttons-for-websites", "share-button.xyz" etc. The list is endless. In this blog we would teach you about Referral Analytics Spam | Ways and Tricks to Stop it.

Referral Analytics Spam | Ways and Tricks to Stop it 

Primarily invented by Russian Spammers by sending false traffic to Google Analytics. One fine day if you would check your analytics, it would show massive increase in traffic. As a website owner we might feel happy about it. But actually it is a spam that is taking place. Sending false traffic to your analytics. This traffic is not real traffic but bots, which are designed for these purpose.

This should be stopped and blocked immediately as it could hamper your actual traffic data and you would be miscalculating all your traffic.

Following are the list of some referral websites, where you could see traffic but actually they are spammers:

• www.sharebutton.xyz

• Social sharing buttons

• Sharebuttons.to

• cdn front.to

• sharebutton.org

• Secret.google.com You are Invited. Vote for Trumph

• Semalt.semalt.com

• Buttons-for-website.com

• best-seo-offer.com

• blackhatworth.com

• 7moneymakingonline.com

This list could be endless. And the surpised part is that most of these websites actually exists. And we feel proud that we are getting referral traffic from these. But thats not true. 

So what is the purpose of these spammers. Let's try to find out.

The prime reasons for spamming are a follows:

• To commit click fraud (for increasing advertising revenue or depleting competitors’ advertising budget )

• Harvest email addresses (for mass spamming)

• Create fake user accounts

• Submit comments for spamming purpose.

• Scrape website contents (for creating spam website to host adsense ads)

• Spread malware (for advertising and getting ransom from webmasters)

• Scrape Google Analytics Ids for sending fake traffic

• Send fake website traffic etc.

Now, we know, what it is. Let us read how to stop it.

Referral Analytics Spam | Ways and Tricks to Stop it 

Follow the given steps:

STEP 1:

Let's find them on your Analytics account.

• Log in to your Analytics Admin Account.

• Click on "Acquisition"

• Now Click on "All Traffic"

• Now Click on "Referrals"

• List of all referrals website woud appear. You need to find suspicious websites. (check the list we have shared earlier)

STEP 2:

Let's block them now.

• Click on "ADMIN" tab on top.

• Under "Account" on Left, click on "All Filters"

• Now Click on "+ Add Filters"

• Now Write "Filter Name". (You could write anything for your reference, i prefer writing full website URL).

• Under "Filter Type", Click on "Custom".

• Now under "Exclude" – Select Field – Choose "Campaign Source".

• Now Click on "All Website Data" and "ADD".

• Finally "Save"

You have blocked the spammers website now. Please do remember, if there are more than one websites, you need to blok them as well by following the same steps.

Hope this was clear and helpful. If you wish to ask anything related to this please feel free to comment or to email Us.