Lots of Russian visits

SmexyLizard · Mar 7, 2015

So just after I set up Google Analytics and started tracking visitors to my site I noticed that something like 80% of my visitors are speaking Russian from Russia. Since then the total number of sessions is done to ~50% of all sessions since I started my blog, but only ~3% of those are new sessions. My blog is in English, is hosted in America, has nothing to do with Russia and has barely had any promotion so I'm confused as to where the traffic from Russia is coming from. I thought they could be spiders, but I'd expect Google/Yahoo/etc to crawl from local data centers. Anyone have any insight?

traveler329 · Mar 8, 2015

yes i get it too. its called "referal spam" and its a tactic to get people to visit those sites which show up as referrals in your analytics.

i have tried blocking those sites in my htaccess file but i doesn't seem to work..

cottonwolf · Mar 8, 2015

does your visitors come from a forum.darodar. stg ?

webonic · Mar 8, 2015

Russians on league of legends, russians on global offensive russians everywhere.

lancis · Mar 8, 2015

Referral spam probably, Russians produce a lot of it.
I generally just block the Russian IP range on sites where Russians are not going to convert.

sssteve · Mar 8, 2015

SmexyLizard said:
So just after I set up Google Analytics and started tracking visitors to my site I noticed that something like 80% of my visitors are speaking Russian from Russia. Since then the total number of sessions is done to ~50% of all sessions since I started my blog, but only ~3% of those are new sessions. My blog is in English, is hosted in America, has nothing to do with Russia and has barely had any promotion so I'm confused as to where the traffic from Russia is coming from. I thought they could be spiders, but I'd expect Google/Yahoo/etc to crawl from local data centers. Anyone have any insight?

Yeah Ukraine seems to have the same problem

mhassni · Mar 8, 2015

Do you get any conversion or clicks from that traffic ?

lilmasta · Mar 8, 2015

darodar.com and couple of more sites are famous in reff spam :S they were alll ove my google analytics you can block them using google analytics and .htaccess here is link to a detailed step by step guide on how to block refferal spam http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data

youXx · Mar 8, 2015

I second mhassni's Q. Do they convert.

phirex · Mar 8, 2015

Its spam meant to trick webmasters into checking the "referring url" - once they do, they usually redirect you to amazon implementing their affiliate cookie, now if you make a purchase in the next 30 days, they get $$$.
I bet they are making decent money, and i bet someone from BHW is behind it.
EXPOSE YOURSELF!

lancis · Mar 8, 2015

phirex said:
Its spam meant to trick webmasters into checking the "referring url" - once they do, they usually redirect you to amazon implementing their affiliate cookie, now if you make a purchase in the next 30 days, they get $$$.
I bet they are making decent money, and i bet someone from BHW is behind it.
EXPOSE YOURSELF!

I bet they make pennies... every webmaster I know uses some sort of private mode to browse Internet.

SmexyLizard · Mar 9, 2015

cottonwolf said:
does your visitors come from a forum.darodar. stg ?

Yep, just checked, that's the place.

mhassni said:
Do you get any conversion or clicks from that traffic ?

The bounce rate is ~85%, so I'd say no.

lilmasta said:
darodar.com and couple of more sites are famous in reff spam :S they were alll ove my google analytics you can block them using google analytics and .htaccess here is link to a detailed step by step guide on how to block refferal spam

Thanks!

cottonwolf · Mar 12, 2015

Could you redirect them to some affiliate link of yours? What kind of traffic is this anyway? Bot? I guess so, don't know how referral spam works, time to google it

edit: nvm, found my answers in 2 min http://www. optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/

contentdarknight · Mar 13, 2015

This is the new thing I learned today called referral spam. Thanks for sharing your problem.

Zwielicht · Mar 13, 2015

webonic said:
Russians on league of legends, russians on global offensive russians everywhere.

Russians on... Black Hat World!?

socialnetwork0utlaw · Apr 7, 2015

same here. I am from Bulgaria. the referer is "googlsucks do tcom" and it redirects to mozilla plugin page. I wonder if this kind of traffic affects the CTR and other data that later will lower my income from ads or down-rank my site??

Corydoras007 · Apr 9, 2015

They're ghost referrals. They don't actually visit your site. They somehow scraped google analytics ids and then spammed the hell out of them

To fix, make a new analytics id... Probably something that doesn't end with a 1. This should stop these ghost referrals. For how long? I don't know.

Lots of Russian visits

SmexyLizard

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traveler329

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cottonwolf

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webonic

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lancis

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