Stripping Out Referral Spam From Past Reports
-
Hi,
I'm looking to confirm the best approach for retroactively stripping away referral spam (free buttons, SEMalt, etc.). Now to be clear, I already have filters in place to ignore them from current stats, so moving forward I'm fine. However, I'd love to go back and check untainted stats.
I've setup segments using a regex to strip the root words away and it seems to be working. I have a regex setup to strip out things like: social-buttons|seoanalyses|copyrightclaims|classifiedads|jobsense|free-share-buttons|e-buyeasy|acrobats.hol|cheap-online|amezon|search-help|qut-smoking and so forth.
I've been going through my referral data, noticing obvious spam, and adding their domains to my segment. Is this the optimal way for me to get a clear, untainted view of my past stats?
-
Sweet, glad to hear our filters will suffice. Thanks for the input, Daniel.
-
Hey, no worries and you're right that your filters should block them as well. Using .htaccess would be just an additional defense mechanism but may not be necessary.
-
Hi Daniel,
Thanks again for the response. What would be the difference in Analytics data between my filters and going straight to .htaccess? If the data is the same, is there an additional benefit to .htaccess?
For regular users, I'd suspect less bandwidth since they can't load my domain, but I don't think these bots actually load the page or visit.
-
I would use your .htaccess file to block them with the following code (this would for example block referrals from semalt.com and semalt.com subdomains):
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^.]+.)*semalt.com\ [NC,OR]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
You can also use .htaccess to block IP addresses associated with the spammy sources.
edit: just saw your edit but hope this helps nevertheless!
-
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the additional tips. I do have the bot filtering feature enabled as another point of protection. I checked my referral exclusion list and apparently set this up about a year ago for the initial wave of referral bots I noticed. I didn't know it added them to direct.
The majority of my spam referral hosts have been added to regular filters. I think with the combination of my retroactive approach and new filters, I should have reliable data going forward.
-
Hi there,
You’re on the right track and the best way to retroactively remove spammy sources is through report filters and advanced segments.
A couple other notes:
- A good way to spot spammy referrers is to sort by bounce rate and eliminate any with 100% bounce and over 10 sessions.
- Avoid using the “referral exclusion list” since this will just count spam traffic as direct traffic instead.
- You should also enable the GA ‘bot filtering’ feature under ‘Reporting view settings’ as seen here
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google is reporting a server error, but there's no server error.
Google is erroneously reporting a server error and I just can't figure out the source of the issue. My links work, and GoDaddy ensures me there is no server error. This issue arose when I moved from HTTP to HTTPS and CPanel hosting, but I've got no idea how to fix it. I thought maybe I have duplicate content, but it does not appear that way. Any suggestions? I'm at a loss. www.thedishmaster.com
Reporting & Analytics | | TheDishmaster0 -
Spam Direct Traffic
Hello, Lately, I have been receiving a big amount of unexpected direct traffic from Boston. After analyzing with Analytivs, this is what I get (please, check attachment). Normally I would be blocking this traffic source straight away from my Google Analytics account, and also blocking this traffic from accesing my servers, but check out the analytic metrics: this traffic represents 12% of my total traffic right now!!! av. session duration is 4:53 !! bounce rate is 72% !!!! pages/session 1.44 !! Service provider is "Microsoft Corporation" who looks like one of the typical spammy service providers. My question is, is this a bot?? what do you think ? Thanks, Luis zUlVHIi
Reporting & Analytics | | Yeeply.com1 -
Keyword Opportunities in Insights Area Suggest SPAM Keywords?
Happy Holidays Moz family, We were recently reviewing our insights on an account and the keywords suggested were: 1. malibog pinoy sex story 2. desi bhabhi ki chudai 3. cennai mamies pundai mulai Clearly these are SPAM or something. We have run malware scans of the site, used Google Webmaster tools to identify incoming and outgoing links and don't see anything. I have also exported the entire site to Notepad++ and searched for these terms. Nothing. Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you in advance for any suggestions! We're having some ranking issues with the same site so perhaps this is the root of the issue. The site has some great links.
Reporting & Analytics | | Tosten0 -
Stripping referrer on website with a mix of both http and https
I know going from https to http (usually) strips referrers but I was wondering if the referrer is stripped when your website is a mix of both http and https? Say someone browses your site (on http), adds a product and then goes to your cart (https), then decides to go back to another page on your website which is http. Will this strip the referrer? Any help on this would be great, thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Fitto0 -
Why doesn't Google seem to care about referral spam?
In researching the issue of referral spam, there is no shortage if info, both on MOZ and beyond. But, neither the Google Analytics Blog or Help Forums seem to mention the issue at all. I'd think it is something that they would want to get rid of, yet it seems like they don't even acknowledge that it exists. Anyone have insights into this? Am I missing something, or is Google strangely silent on an issue that is becoming more and more annoying for anyone trying to use GA data?
Reporting & Analytics | | irapasternack1 -
Filter the Spam traffic
Hello everyone, We have to filter traffic from spam website like webcrawler.com semalt.com social-button.com etc. So we created custom filter with Filter field: referral Filter Pattern: Webcrawler.com|semalt.com|in-g61.mail.yahoo.com|d47c5f40.linkbucks.com|buttons-for-website.com|semalt.semalt.com|forum.topic34157145.darodar.com|social-buttons.com While verification of filter there is error displaying i.e. This filter would not have changed your data. Either the filter configuration is incorrect, or the set of sampled data is too small. Please help in resolving issue..
Reporting & Analytics | | Obbserv0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee.*
Hello, in a site, in which I'm working .. in webmaster tools i see a lot of links as following: With more links to your site: linguee.es 3.066
Reporting & Analytics | | jarizaro
linguee.com 2.964
linguee.pe 2.722
linguee.mx 2.721 Total inlinks to my site are 20.000, and links incoming from linguee.* are more than 50% !!! My site is about spanish courses in spain, but i think all these links are fuck*ng me. I checked if these links have nofollow tag, and not, they don't have this attritute. What can i do? My site is going down in Google. ¿disavow that domain? Please help.0 -
Excluding referral traffic from a specific page Google analytics
Hi, I am trying to exclude from referrals from a particular page i.e. www.domain.com/nothispage within Google analytics, I have tried a couple variations within the advanced filter (Regex etc) section without much luck, could anyone assist ? Updated-trying to do this using a filter for the entire profile. Thanks Marc
Reporting & Analytics | | NRMA0