Semalt: How To Block Referrer Spam – Compelling Tips To Remember

Running a blog or an e-commerce website is an enriching and rewarding experience which offers lots of possibilities to grow the businesses and to create opportunities. However, several idiots try to destroy the online companies and create obstacles for everyone without any specific reason. They want to do nothing more than creating a mess, and referrer spammers are one of them. It's safe to say that the referrer spammers and hackers are the graffiti artists on the internet who always seek to leave the illiterate markings online.

If you examine the Google Analytics account and see an increase in the referrers from the unknown websites, there are chances that your website has been targeted, and you need to take measures as soon as possible. The websites that send referral spam are hulfingtonpost.com, priceg.com cenoval.ru, and bestwebsitesawards.com. It may sound odd, but most of the webmasters and bloggers don't have an idea that their sites are receiving fake views, most of them come from the sites we just mentioned above.

Luckily, Max Bell, the Customer Success Manager of Semalt, provides here some ways to block those sites and stop their traffic from disturbing your businesses on the internet.

Use the .htaccess file to combat referrer spam

If your site is hosted via the Apache webserver, you would have to update the .htaccess file. The best way is to block the .htaccess file to exclude spammers and bad bots. You can also redirect them to the Apache that might not be easy for them to guess.

Google Analytics Filters

In most situations, the spammers and their bots will not visit your website. In such circumstances, you should block these bots and retrieve them to their own websites by inserting the special codes in Google Analytics account. You can also create filters in your Google Analytics profile, and it will help you improve the quality of your traffic. Fortunately, Google Analytics offers lots of utilities to eliminate the spammers from the analytics data and reports. The only downside of this procedure is that it will not be applied to all the websites simultaneously.

Manually Configure Bot Filtering

You can manually configure the bot filtering. For this, you should go to your Google Analytics account and create the New Filter. Select the Custom option and insert the specific code in that.

Blocking Referrer spam IP Address

You can easily block the referrer spam IP addresses. I like the step of blocking the traffic coming from the anonymous IPs. You should make sure that the access of spammers is denied to your website through this practice.

Google Analytics IP Exclusion List

The next step is to ensure that you have saved the Google Analytics IP exclusion list. It is important to remember that you cannot enjoy the best results until you have not excluded this list. Google Analytics offers a large number of options to exclude the list and block the IP addresses. You can easily choose and install a plugin on your website, ensuring its complete safety and protection.