Quick & Easy Way To Block Analtyics Referral Spam Like Semalt.com & Others

RightInTwo · Dec 23, 2014

Hey Guys,
Wanted to share this with anyone that has been having issues with referral spam in their Analytics. I've noticed that a lot of my stats are getting worse and worse and completely messing up my reporting for a lot of my sites. This is nothing new, but wanted to share it with everyone that might be having the same issues. There are ways to do this through .htaccess, but this literally will take you 30 seconds:

Go To google.com/analytics
Go to your analytics profile that you want to edit
At the top, click Admin (you must have admin level rights)
In the 2nd column of settings, click on .JS Tracking Info
A drop down will open, select "Referral Exclusion List"
Enter the domains you want to block. I have found that my profile was getting hit hard by the following that I blocked: 7makemoneyonline.com, buttons-for-website.com, semalt.com, forum.topic44897056.darodar.com

Thats it! Back to accurate data!

KocerRoxy · Dec 23, 2014

You can use analytics filters to remove any kind of traffic from your reports.

filters: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034823
exclude referers using filters: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034842?hl=en

RightInTwo · Dec 24, 2014

m4dm4n said:
You can use analytics filters to remove any kind of traffic from your reports.

filters: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034823
exclude referers using filters: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034842?hl=en

True, but I didn't want to have to keep doing that over and over. This will remove it moving forward for my analytics

stharthjw6j · Dec 24, 2014

Are you still getting the hits though just ghosted, or are they literally blocked?

RightInTwo · Dec 29, 2014

whatrat said:
Are you still getting the hits though just ghosted, or are they literally blocked?

They aren't coming through at all. The only thing that I have noticed is that there are more and more sites popping up as referral spam.

The Scarlet Pimp · Dec 29, 2014

i use a php script to block things like this.

innosoft · Dec 29, 2014

i think its possible to block those via robots or .htaccess also.

RightInTwo · Dec 31, 2014

innosoft said:
i think its possible to block those via robots or .htaccess also.

It is, but for anyone that isn't savvy, blocking the referrer in analytics is quick and easy.

KocerRoxy · Jan 2, 2015

whatrat said:
Are you still getting the hits though just ghosted, or are they literally blocked?

If you block the refs from google analytics, the hits keep comming but they are ghosted ( they don't show up in analytics at all )

If you block the refs from php/htaccess then you can ( depending on the implementation ) block the hits entirely

The Scarlet Pimp · Jan 2, 2015

you can also block by language.

raygendary · Jan 2, 2015

I have the same problem, this darodar shts are coming to my website, what is there negative effect tho?

Quick & Easy Way To Block Analtyics Referral Spam Like Semalt.com & Others

RightInTwo

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