Semalt Review: How To Filter Referrer Spam In Google Analytics

You may have seen the swarm of irritating and annoying referrer spam in your Google Analytics account. It is a major problem for small and medium-sized websites, and the spammers might increase your site's bounce rate up to 100%. If you just developed a business site and are not receiving much traffic, make sure your bounce rate is lower than twenty percent. If you see a spike in your traffic, the chances are that the referrer spam has hit your web pages.

Jason Adler, a top specialist from Semalt, assures that it's possible to exclude the referrer spam from your Google Analytics account, but you have to take care of a few things. Even when the low-quality hits are a few in number, they can skew your site's data massively depending on its nature.

Referrer spam is dangerous, and you should not take it lightly. If you see suspicious referrals are coming from sites like darodar.com and howtostopreferralspam.eu, you should take measures immediately and do not visit those websites at any cost. The only reason these sites spam your Google Analytics account is that they want your visitors to visit their own web pages. Whether it's to download antivirus programs or anti-malware programs, they make money from a bunch of ads that are shown in the referral links.

Method#1: Filter the Referrer Spam in Google Analytics with REGEX

There are two types of Google Analytics spam. The first is the odd and annoying web crawler, which can be blocked with the .htaccess file. The second is the ghost referral spam that doesn't visit your website and can be filtered out easily.

Method#2: Create a Master View but don't create the new filters in the All Website Data section

Google always recommends that we should maintain the number of views being generated on our website and should create the master view on a monthly basis. In fact, the Master View will even show up in your Google Analytics account, and you can access the incoming data and traffic based on your requirements. Creating the New Master View is easy. By default, it is unfiltered, so you have to filter it out in your Google Analytics account.

Method#3: Create the Fake Referral Spam filters

In the Admin panel, you should select the New View option and click on the New Filter button. Here you will see the Add Filter to the View section where you have to name the filter whatever you want to. Make sure you have excluded all the referrer spam from your Google Analytics account in the Filter Field section. In the Filter Pattern section, you would have to paste a specific code to get the referrer spam blocked by the whole. The following code can also be placed in this section:

Spam Referrers You should Filter:

The list is far beyond completion, but the following websites should be banned from your Google Analytics account as soon as possible.

buttons-for-your-website.com
buttons-for-website.com
darodar.com
blackhatworth.com
priceg.com
hulfingtonpost.com
o-o-6-o-o.com

These referrer spam domains aim to disguise themselves as the famous service providers, but they are good for nothing and should be gotten rid of immediately.