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 Analytics Automated Reporting
HI all, I tend to do a big reporting powerpoint deck using screenshots from google analytics and tables I create year end and mid year. It's like an 80 page report for the 10 webisite swe have and then I go ahead and make annotations as I see from the data. That being said this can take a lot of time, up to a 40 hours of time to pull it all together or more which is challenging when you have daily meetings. Anyhow, I've looked into automating and tried a couple things: 1. Tableau- but it keeps crashing and seems tedious 2. Dashlane and supergrabber- seem a bit tedious to set up too. Anyone have ideas on how to better shar ereporting in the organization in this type of format for a website (websites)? Organic, paid, traffic, etc. Laura
Reporting & Analytics | | lauramrobinson322 -
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 -
Referral Traffic Issue
I'm working on a site that has low traffic volumes due to its niche. That's fine but we are daily getting referral traffic from unrelated domains without a link. These visits are always 100% bounce which is impacting the overall click.through rate. The domains are not the same and different ones come through all the time, so it is difficult to keep on top of. Any ideas what could be going on here and an effective way of dealing with this?
Reporting & Analytics | | MickEdwards0 -
No Google Analytics code on page BUT reporting is active
How could Google Analytics be reporting data if my pages don't have the GA code on them? Mike
Reporting & Analytics | | Mike_c0 -
Reported data in Multi-channel funnels in GA wrong?
I'd love to start using the Multi-channel funnels feature in Google Analytics but I have zero confidence in the reported data as it seems to bear no relationship to the standard ecomm reports. To be specific, in August 2013, MCF is reporting the following for email campaigns: Assisted conversions = 20
Reporting & Analytics | | Bluesnapper
Assisted conversion value = £1,405.91
Last Click or Direct Conversions = 14
Last Click or Direct Conversion Value = £369.57 Now switching to the traffic sources report, GA reports for the email campaigns revenue was £1,226,41 over the same period across 21 transactions. My interpretation of this is that the email campaigns were the "last-click" and delivered £1,226,41 and 21 "conversions" (as I have no goals configured in this GA view, conversions = transactions I believe) That leaves the MCF last-click report short by £856.84 (£1,226,41 - £369.57) I can see no reason why this should be so unless I'm not interpreting the data correctly! Anybody have any suggestions/ideas as to what's going on? Any help appreciated.0 -
Is the meta description available on the On Page Optimization Report even if its currently being optimized?
Currently, description is only available if the element is not being optimized (i.e. character count is off/keyword isn't included in the description)
Reporting & Analytics | | Jerome670 -
Looking for an Automated SEO report Software Solution
Buon Giorno from 4 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂 I love Google Analytics but I'm bogged down with analytics report writting. I'm looking for a web analytics softeare package that: 1. White Label ie we can brand the reports up
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
2. Bespoke ie i can pick and choose what I report on
3. Automated ie I can set a time & date when the client receives the report. Any recommendations appreciated 🙂 Grazie tanto, David0 -
Link Analysis Past 6 Months
I'm analyzing inbound links for a site and I was wondering if there is a way to see how many of the links were created in a certain time period? Example how many inbound links were sent to this sub domain during the past 6 months? I would think there would be a fairly simple way to do this, but not sure. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | seantgreen0