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Blocking Spam Referrals on GA

by itsmyluckyday
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I understand I can filter out spam referrals such using Google Analytics... My question is if I'm blocking a URL (such as "sharebutton.org" which is just a redirect of simple-share-buttons), how do I insert the URL correctly?

The filter feed I selected was "Hostname" and then in the form field I inserted simple-share-buttons.com <-- is that the correct way? I saw that some make you utilize a "\"

Need to stop these damn spammers from messing up my analytics! THANKS!
#blocking #referrals #spam
  • Profile picture of the author Allweb247
    With Analitycs? Maybe with webmaster tools?
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  • Profile picture of the author kpy4ok
    Add this to .htaccess

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt\.com [NC,OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website\.com
    RewriteRule .* - [F]
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  • Profile picture of the author Cataclysm1987
    Comprehensive guide to .htaccess- Blocking users/ sites by referrer

    That's where he got the above script. :-)

    Try Googling stuff next time. PM me if you need help accessing your htaccess file.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cataclysm1987
    Oh also this:

    https://support.google.com/analytics.../2795830?hl=en

    Sorry, we are giving you htaccess stuff and you asked for GA. Woops...
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    I don't think you can ignore spam traffic on GA.. How you can be sure it's spammed? So, how GA will see it as spam???
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  • Profile picture of the author CarloSeo
    There is nothing you can do with the htaccess file, these spammers use a vulnerability in Google Analytics to hit you, they never visit your site. People get confuse because they add it to the htaccess file and the spammer disappear. This is just a coincidence since Ghost Referrer comes and go, sometimes they show up for a few days and disappear

    They use random GA tracking ID's(usually ending in 1 like UA-XXXXX-1). The source of the problem is in GA so you have to solve it there, if you want to check it go to the access log file of your site and you won't see any record in of this fake visits, they only show up in GA.

    You can see more information about this here What is Referrer Spam? and Why you should Stop it!, I recommend it reading it to understand how Referrer Spam works and how to really stop it.

    As for the actual question how to add the url? you can find also all the information there, but basically you don't use hostname (if you check simple-share-buttons.com hostname you will see not set) you have to use Campaign source to exclude referrers (as Google recommend it).
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