Semalt Expert: How To Block Referral Spam That Ruins Your Analytics Referral Data

Sometimes, your website might be getting referral traffic. In this case, this traffic can be causing numerous adverse effects on your analytics data. Every webmaster requires precise and accurate data for e-commerce marketing purposes. Spambots and other sources giving referral spam may contain a lot of information on the spam data. In this case, users can get inaccurate information regarding the progress of the e-commerce field. To remove fake traffic from your data, you may need to learn how to block referral spam from your Analytics data.

In this article, Jack Miller, a professional staff member of Semalt Digital Services, provides several tactics which can help you restore the right traffic:

Determining fake traffic

In most cases, fake traffic originates from domains which try to hide the hostnames. Fake traffic may come from counterfeit landing pages. Blackhat SEO agencies who promise quick result for cheap tend to have most of these phony traffic sources. Major botnet scams involve many hostnames driving phony page visits to your website. In most cases, this information interferes with the way in which many people interact with this portal. The use of insecure email providers increases the risk of getting this kind of traffic.

A malicious internet user can be able to get your Google Analytics property ID. Using your property ID, he can increase or decrease any metrics as long as they know which factors of the Google Analytics they are editing. Every version of Google Analytics is subject to this kind of web visits. In other cases, some email providers tend to detect emails coming from spam domains. It is essential to use a secure email provider for most of the domains.

How to block referral spam

You can prevent their spam domains using a .htaccess file on the root of your domain. Users who are utilizing an Apache server have the option of using several codes on their websites. It is essential to take care when running these systems on your website. Some of these codes have the potential of pulling down the entire site from the server. Moreover, they can lead to an increased risk of referral spam.

You can also use Google Analytics spam filters. Most webmasters have Google Analytics account to help them in their website analytics tasks. In the admin tab, you can block traffic coming from a particular domain of your choice. You can be able to add custom filters of your choice. These filters can block the traffic metrics coming from the fields which are spam. You can also filter traffic by IP address. The use of cookies and other aspects can enhance security on your website.

Conclusion

Referral spam can be a challenging task facing numerous e-commerce activities. For instance, persons operating e-commerce websites may meet a lot of spam as well as other diverse businesses. Learning to block referral traffic can be difficult. This guideline can help you with tips on how to prevent referral spam from interfering with your website information. Furthermore, you can filter bots from making fake web visits to your domain.