Semalt Islamabad Expert Shares A Guide To Removing Referrer Spam In Google Analytics

Various webmaster forums, blogs, and websites are lit up by the issue of referrer spam in Google Analytics. Referral spam or referrer spam is fake traffic that appears in your Google Analytics account and pretends to be real users. At a glimpse, you will feel that real people are visiting your web pages, but the bounce rate is always 100%.

If you keenly observe your Google Analytics account, you will see that referrer spam has bombarded your account with malware, viruses, and sneaky affiliate redirects. Some of them want you to buy their Amazon products, and the others aim to create links back to their own websites. Some of the worst offenders that might ruin your site's stats are darodar, and buttons-for-website. If you see referrer traffic from these domains, you should be assured that they are spam and should be gotten rid of as soon as possible.

To do this, follow the tips mentioned in the article by Sohail Sadiq, a leading expert from Semalt.

How does referrer spam work?

Various webmasters believe that if a session is registered in the Google Analytics account, it means a person has visited their site. Most often, robots and spam visit your sites and their visits are recorded by the Google Analytics. They leave your web pages the same time, and the bounce rate is always high. Google Analytics depends on the browsers to execute some JavaScript codes that make the HTTP requests to the servers, which will register the hit on your site and will set up cookies on the users' browsers. However, the HTTP requests can be sent by any device connected to the internet, and the hit will be recorded in your Google Analytics account.

How to fix referrer spam

Now that you know how the spam works, you can fix it easily. Go to your Google Analytics account and create filters here. Apply filters to all suspicious websites and exclude traffic from those referrers. This method will not work if those websites are already enlisted in the Campaign Source field. In such circumstances, you can exclude the visits from the Referral Exclusion List of your Google Analytics account. Another method is by adjusting the settings of your .htaccess file. Use the bot-filtering features of your Google Analytics account, and you can exclude the geographical regions that are responsible for spam and low-quality traffic.

A working solution

Currently, the best and most reliable solution is to apply the view level filters for excluding the referral spam. You can also create filters and the advanced segments to ensure your site's safety on the internet. With this method, you can block all suspicious websites and should insert the following code into the .htaccess file of your site to maximize its protection.

The best part is that this code can be edited based on the websites you want to block in your Google Analytics account. If you receive tons of visits and you did not pay attention to white hat SEO, then you have to block the malicious intents to improve your site's ranking in the search engine results.