Semalt Expert Knows How To Avoid Being Tricked By Online Fraudsters Sending Referrer Spam
Various webmasters and marketers use Google Analytics for tracking visitors, page visits, time spent on a site, and how the users interact with their sites (form submission, video play, newsletter subscriptions, e-commerce tracking). Two years ago, webmasters noticed suspicious referral traffic in their Google Analytics accounts and thought the false views were coming from unethical and illegal domains and affiliate sites. Spammers and the black hat SEOs had used various techniques to add their domains to the Google Analytics accounts to make people wonder why it's happening. Semalt Senior Customer Success Manager, Julia Vashneva, tells that darodar.com keeps on sending hundreds to thousands of visitors to the sites and tricks the Google Analytics accounts in a large number.
How big is the problem?
Some webmasters have reported that the false referrer traffic accounts for 55% of overall traffic, which means it has the ability to make the A/B tests and conversion optimization as well as other similar marketing campaigns meaningless until you depend on Google Analytics to take the right decisions. Even when you remove the fake visits, the spammers will spoof real sites such as twitter.com, raddit.com, and addons.mozilla.org to trick a large number of users. They have gotten smarter and add real metrics to the referrer domains. The major offenders in referral spam are:
- motherboard.vice.com
- site-auditor.online
- website-analytics.online
- addons.mozilla.org
- monetizationking.net
- stumbleupon.com
- twitter.com
- addons.mozilla.org
- speedup-my.site
- thenextweb.com
- reddit.com
- keywords-monitoring-your-success.com
- top1-seo-service.com
- fix-website-errors.com
- free-social-buttons5.xyz
- law-enforcement-bot-dd.xyz
- slow-website.xyz
- social-buttons-aa.xyz / referral
- free-video-tool.com / referral
- boltalko.xyz / referral
- scanner-jess.top / referral
- scanner-jane.top / referral
- buketeg.xyz / referral
- begalka.xyz / referral
- bukleteg.xyz / referral
- bezlimitko.xyz / referral
- arendovalka.xyz / referral
- compliance-don.top / referral
- abcdefh.xyz / referral
- scanner-john.top / referral
- scanner-irvin.top / referral
- scanner-mary.top / referral
- scanner-walter.top / referral
- abcdefh.xyz / referral
When you observe traffic from these referrer sources, the chances are that spammers have hit your site.
How to remove referrer spam and fake traffic in Google Analytics
The best way to remove referral spam and fake traffic is by applying filters and excluding the referral spam on a regular basis. You should also create filters for the advanced segments to ensure your site's safety and protection. Also, you can create customized dimension and add vertical lines followed by the suspicious domain names.
You should bear in mind that the spammers register plenty of domains every day, so if you manage more than two Google Analytics accounts, you should install Google's automated problem tracking tool called as Auto Spam Filters to ensure your safety and protection.
Unfortunately, Google has not come up with any solution on how to tackle with referrer spam. One way to get rid of referral spam is by deploying extra filters to your Google Analytics accounts. This will help you block out the spam to an extent.
As long as authentication mechanism points out who is sending data to a particular UA-ID, it's possible to get rid of referral spam. As Google Analytics operates under the precipice of the JS tracking and measurement protocol, you should keep an eye on both of them as they depend on unidentified client machines sending out the HTTP requests. Analytics Toolkit is the best kit for webmasters who want to ascertain the authenticity of their statistics. This tool is equipped with auto spam filter which keeps off the referral spam.