Semalt Expert – Analytics Referrer/Ghost Spam Blocker

A lot of webmasters and ordinary site owners don't know what the ghost or referrer spam is. These are two specific domain types in your Google Analytics. The hackers send fake traffic toy to our site using spam botnets, and bots and most of the people don't know how to get rid of them. The views your site is getting are not by people but by a bot. Such traffic is harmful to your site as it pollutes your Google Analytics statistics and data.

You can adopt a few strategies and ways, provided by Max Bell, the Customer Success Manager of Semalt, to get rid of Google Analytics spam.

Traffic Spam statistics

Different reports and analysis of hundreds to thousands of Google Analytics accounts reveal that traffic spam is a major problem and should be gotten rid of as early as possible. More than a half billion websites on the internet receive fake and spam traffic on a daily basis. The most amazing thing is that their owners don't know how to get rid of spam and resolve the problem. Hundreds to thousands of domains are bought, and websites are created to send spam to the authentic and genuine websites. Even the sites such as AliExpress, eBay, Amazon, and Semalt have been infected by the spam in recent months. The fake domains redirect you to infected links, damaging your site and its articles.

Types of Analytics spam

There are two main types of referral spam: crawler spam and ghost spam. Crawler spam visits your website as an anonymous. It is difficult to identify and observe if you are receiving organic traffic or inorganic traffic. When they visit your websites, it seems to be original, and your site is hit a number of times. The other type is ghost spam which directly impacts your Google Analytics. You should be aware of the fact that the ghost spam does not visit your website. Instead, it makes the use of Measurement Protocols for sending fake hits to the servers of your Google Analytics. It is far more dangerous and threatening than the first type as it directly affects your Google Analytics and has nothing to do with your website.

How to prevent ghost, referrer and analytics spam?

There are a number of ways to prevent ghost, analytics or ghost spam. You can filter or block the ghost spam from your files and hashtag. You can also use hostname filters to get rid of ghost spam as it uses fake or no hostnames. To get rid of crawler spam, you should remove it from your data by adjusting your settings. The campaign source filters in your Google Analytics can make your work easier and faster. It is easy to remove and should be done as early as possible to prevent your site from getting crashed. One of the easiest ways to get rid of spam is that you should use a variety of filters and install relevant plugins as early as possible. It will not take you a lot of time to adjust your settings. Once you are done, you will see that your site and Google Analytics are protected from malware and viruses. You should always make sure to keep your files save somewhere offline. This is also called backing up your files and articles.