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
-
Query on google analytic event report and customized report - Please help.
For my site I placed Black Friday offer.Now I have highlighted one product at homepage banner and tracking that with event. I am sharing with you actual figures of 1 day from Google analytic. Your proper response on this query will really really really helpful to me for understanding google analytic deeply and properly. So pls give your precious time for answering me, I will be thankful to you from bottom of my heart. I am checking event report from behavior, following is report for by that product event - Sessions - 30
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh9639
Unique Events - 30
Total Events - 34
Ecommerce Conversion Rate - 3.33% I am checking now report from All pages via Behaviour section - Page views - 97, Unique Page Views - 62, Entrances - 7, Bounce Rate - 57.14%, %Exit - 17.53% Now I create customize report for the same by adding
session -7
Ecommerce conversion rate - 0
unique events -4 MY query - when I added session in customized report then it is different from Event session why (7 and 30) ? same way Ecommerce conversion rate in customized report showing 0% why ( 0% and 3.33% ) ? same way unique events 4 and 30 ? do you suggest what is the best way to analysis such page or what will be best customize report for such analysis? Thanks0 -
Does referral exclusions remove the ecommerce value from Google Analytics?
Quick question on Referral exclusions. We have a client that just rebuilt their Magento website, referral data from Paypal was never an issue, the site properly attributed to source. New web devs finished the site and all purchases through Google Analytics from PayPal Is now showing as referral traffic. Doing research on the issue the suggestion was to create a referral exclusion in GA from PayPal. My question on that, will the ecommerce value default to the previous referral or will it delete the e-commerce value completely from what is gathered?
Reporting & Analytics | | BCutrer0 -
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 -
Google Analytics reporting traffic for 404 pages
Hi guys, Unique issue with google analytics reporting for one of our sites. GA is reporting sessions for 404 pages (landing pages, organic traffic) e.g. for this page: http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php the page is currently a 404 page but GA (see screenshot) is reporting organic traffic (to the landing page). Does anyone know any reasons why this is happening? Cheers. http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php GK0zDzj.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright2 -
What is click2.scour, and why is it showing up as Referral Traffic in Google Analytics?
I've noticed that a couple of my clients in the insurance industry have been receiving a pretty large boost in Referral Traffic from a source called click2.scour.com and click2.efacts.com. What surprises me most is that the traffic has a low Bounce Rate, a high Avg. Visit Duration, and is made up of 100% New Visits. What is this? Why would they be getting so much traffic from these two sources all of a sudden? Thanks in advance for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | copyjack0 -
What does "on first page" mean in seomoz ranking reports?
Hi - When reports here show numbers of keywords appearing "on first page", there must be some implicit assumption made about the number of results listed per page. 1. Can anyone tell me what that assumption is? Is it 10? 20? 2. What about universal results Local links? If the answer to number one is, for instance, 20 results per page, then are there any assumptions made about the number of universal results Local links included? I'm just trying to understand what the reports mean. Thanks, Tim
Reporting & Analytics | | tcolling0 -
Does prevent links from being included in Google Webmaster linking sites report?
My client has clean links in edit from nytimes.com. The links do not have nofollow tags. Google Webmaster stopped including links from nytimes.com in the external linking domains report and we don't know why since the URL is still live. The nytimes.com URL includes this tag in the source code: Are links on pages with NOARCHIVE still counted in Google Webmaster linking domains reports?
Reporting & Analytics | | ebenthurston0 -
What is this referrer site?
Hi Guys....i keep seeing this in my analytics..can someone tell me what it is? 146w.bay146.mail.live.com thanks for your time
Reporting & Analytics | | nomad-2023230