There is a new kind of spam which is annoying Web Masters with fake google analytics data called referral spam which is currently present in many of the websites google analytics data. In this spam/prank you get a fake referral hits from websites like 4webmasters.org, humanorightwatch.org, Buttons-for-your-website.com etc in your Google Analytics as legit referrals. This is actually a prank of a Russian guy called Popov A. Vitaly that is spamming the google analytics accounts with fake data and altering the actual metrics.
Is this Referral Spam Harmful
Referral spam is not harmful in any way for website or visitors as it does not install infected software, malware. It just annoys us with fake Google Analytics Data that is 100% useless. The referral spam visits your website multiple times a day are useless because every visit is exactly 0,00 seconds and has a 100% bounce rate. This means that your beautiful website Analytics data is going to give a disturbed image of your actual traffic data. When you are trying to sell the website to a third party this isn’t going to help you since the stats are way lower than they actually are. This spam is created just for the fun, just to annoy us hard working people.
But the real reason he created the referral spam is because of money. When you (webmaster) visit a spamdomain after you see it in the google analytics data he redirects you to a webshop with his affiliate link, this way you receive the webshops cookie and Mr Vitaly is making money on that, lots of it. To some extend this practice is just another advertising channel for us to stop. In the end Google itself has to stop it by closing the window in the Google Analytics code. But this is going to be a difficult task since the spamdomains randomly generate infinite UA-******* codes until it hits your (randomly chosen) domain. Now lets move on to the solution on how to ban referral spam.
The referral spam websites
Here is a list of few referral spam websites that were encountered in Google Analytics Data.
| semalt.com Darodar.com Priceg.com 7makemoneyonline.com Buttons-for-website.com Ilovevitaly.com Blackhatworth.com Econom.co Iskalko.ru Lomb.co Lombia.co hulfingtonpost.com cenoval.ru bestwebsitesawards.com o-o-6-o-o.com humanorightswatch.org forum20.smailik.org myftpupload.com prodvigator.ua best-seo-solution.com Buttons-for-your-website.com Buy-cheap-online.info offers.bycontext.com website-errors-scanner.com webmaster-traffic.com guardlink.org event-tracking.com | simple-share-buttons.com sharebutton.org s.click.aliexpress.com social-buttons.com site12.social-buttons.com anticrawler.org adcash.com adviceforum.info anticrawler.org blackhatworth.com cenokos.ru cityadspix.com edakgfvwql.ru gobongo.info iskalko.ru kambasoft.com luxup.ru 4webmasters.org get-free-traffic-now.com Best-seo-offer.com Theguardlan.com www1.social-buttons.com netvibes.com webcrawler.com | screentoolkit.com |
How to remove referrer spam
You can block referrer spam in two ways. First, you can block the spam website in your Htaccess file with some simple code we provided below. Will this work? Yes and no, because the ghost visitor never actually visits your website. It only leaves a digital footprint in your Google Analytics data that messes everything up. The best way to remove the referral spam is to filter the spam website in your Google Analytics account. This way the referral data is blocked and filtered and you are left with clean GA web data. Nevertheless, doing both the Htaccess file block and Google Analytics filter won’t do any harm.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*semalt\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Darodar\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Priceg\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*7makemoneyonline\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Buttons-for-website\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Ilovevitaly\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Blackhatworth\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Econom\.co [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Iskalko\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Lomb\.co [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Lombia\.co [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*hulfingtonpost\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*cenoval\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*o\-o\-6\-o\-o\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*humanorightswatch\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*simple\-share\-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*sharebutton\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*s\.click\.aliexpress\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*social\-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*anticrawler\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*site12\.social\-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*adcash\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*adviceforum\.info [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*anticrawler\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*blackhatworth\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*cenokos\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*cityadspix\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*edakgfvwql\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*gobongo\.info [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*iskalko\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*kambasoft\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*luxup\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*myftpupload\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*prodvigator\.ua [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*resellerclub\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*savetubevideo\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*screentoolkit\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*seoexperimenty\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*slftsdybbg\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*socialseet\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*superiends\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*vodkoved\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*websocial\.me [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*ykecwqlixx\.ru [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*76brighton\.co\.uk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*paparazzistudios\.com\.au [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*powitania\.pl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*sharebutton\.net [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*tasteidea\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*descargar\-musica\-gratis\.net [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*torontoplumbinggroup\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*cyprusbuyproperties\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*4webmasters\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*ranksonic\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*best\-seo\-solution\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*get\-free\-traffic\-now\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*googlsucks\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Buttons\-for\-your\-website\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*Best\-seo\-offer\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*offers\.bycontext\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*www1\.social\-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*website\-errors\-scanner\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*free\-share\-buttons\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*theguardlan\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*buy\-cheap\-online\.info [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*netvibes\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*guardlink\.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*securesuite\.co\.uk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*securesuite\.net [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?:\/\/([^.]+\.)*forum20\.smailik\.org [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
Filter referral spam from your Google Analytics
Filtering the referral spam from your Google Analytics is the most efficient and effective way to create clean webdata. It is also the simplest solution if you don’t have any knowledge of Htaccess files. First go to your “Admin” tab in your Google Analytics account. You will see the main account column on the left with the option to choose “All Filters”. Choose this option and then push “+ New Filter”. Give the filter the referral spamwebsites name, push custom and select in the dropdown “filter field” the option “Referral”. Enter the url without www. or http://, for example buttons-for-websites.com or 4webmasters.org in the “Filter Pattern” box. Apply the filter to all your websites in Google analytics and push “Save”.