Stripping Out Referral Spam From Past Reports
-
Hi,
I'm looking to confirm the best approach for retroactively stripping away referral spam (free buttons, SEMalt, etc.). Now to be clear, I already have filters in place to ignore them from current stats, so moving forward I'm fine. However, I'd love to go back and check untainted stats.
I've setup segments using a regex to strip the root words away and it seems to be working. I have a regex setup to strip out things like: social-buttons|seoanalyses|copyrightclaims|classifiedads|jobsense|free-share-buttons|e-buyeasy|acrobats.hol|cheap-online|amezon|search-help|qut-smoking and so forth.
I've been going through my referral data, noticing obvious spam, and adding their domains to my segment. Is this the optimal way for me to get a clear, untainted view of my past stats?
-
Sweet, glad to hear our filters will suffice. Thanks for the input, Daniel.
-
Hey, no worries and you're right that your filters should block them as well. Using .htaccess would be just an additional defense mechanism but may not be necessary.
-
Hi Daniel,
Thanks again for the response. What would be the difference in Analytics data between my filters and going straight to .htaccess? If the data is the same, is there an additional benefit to .htaccess?
For regular users, I'd suspect less bandwidth since they can't load my domain, but I don't think these bots actually load the page or visit.
-
I would use your .htaccess file to block them with the following code (this would for example block referrals from semalt.com and semalt.com subdomains):
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^.]+.)*semalt.com\ [NC,OR]
RewriteRule .* – [F]
You can also use .htaccess to block IP addresses associated with the spammy sources.
edit: just saw your edit but hope this helps nevertheless!
-
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the additional tips. I do have the bot filtering feature enabled as another point of protection. I checked my referral exclusion list and apparently set this up about a year ago for the initial wave of referral bots I noticed. I didn't know it added them to direct.
The majority of my spam referral hosts have been added to regular filters. I think with the combination of my retroactive approach and new filters, I should have reliable data going forward.
-
Hi there,
You’re on the right track and the best way to retroactively remove spammy sources is through report filters and advanced segments.
A couple other notes:
- A good way to spot spammy referrers is to sort by bounce rate and eliminate any with 100% bounce and over 10 sessions.
- Avoid using the “referral exclusion list” since this will just count spam traffic as direct traffic instead.
- You should also enable the GA ‘bot filtering’ feature under ‘Reporting view settings’ as seen here
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics Landing Page Report Discrepancy
I have noticed that when I run a landing page report and use the advanced option so I can view only the landing pages that include a particular string in the URL, have noticed that I in the report, the graph at the top will say one thing, but the data below says something else. For example, the graph for one particular search shows 200 Impressions, but the info below says 700 impressions and 610 clicks. Anyone seen anything similar or have any ideas why? Thanks! Craig
Reporting & Analytics | | TheCraig0 -
Is there an efficient way to block/filter referral spam in Google Analytics for a large network of websites?
Hello, everyone - I'm looking for guidance on how to block or filter referral spam in Google Analytics. But I'm needing to block for an entire network of Wordpress websites. We have two networks which total over 2,500 websites. We are currently blocking sites we find out about via htaccess. This works, but only after we see we are getting hit with the spam. Updating 2,500+ Google Analytics accounts with filtering is not an ideal option due to the time factor and the fact that new bots coming out almost daily. We can continue the htaccess method, but does anyone have any other ideas for blocking referral spam for a large network of sites? These are the other ideas we have. 1. Blocking all traffic from Russia and China based up subnets. We know many will still get through, but it should block 50% of it, we hope.
Reporting & Analytics | | copyjack
2. Moving sites to Google Tag manager. This is a huge tasks but we have seen that sites using Tag Manager are not effected, at least for now. Other ideas are appreciated!0 -
All goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Hi All, I have switched my website from http to https After switching from http to https all goal conversions in Google analytics showing under referral.I have also updated the GA code for https. Please help me out to fix the issue. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Google referral traffic drop around 14th July 2014 (UK). Anyone else seeing it?
We've seen around a 25% drop in Google referral traffic from the 14th July 2014 onwards and having real trouble identifying why and from what search terms we're being effected. WMT and Moz Pro don't show any movement. Is anyone else seeing the same thing on UK search terms? Seems a bit late to be the effect of Panda 4.0? Any help would be amazing. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | whis1 -
Hour of the day that my analytics goals are being triggered within the all traffic report.
I am trying to identify the hour of the day that particular keywords (organic and PPC) are triggering my goals. Ideally I'd like to be able to use the all traffic report with the secondary dimension set as keyword. Hopefully I'm missing something simple, thanks all. Mark
Reporting & Analytics | | mde9110 -
Facebook referral
Olympic athletes in track & field and BMX use our product in their training. When they discuss how they use our product on Facebook, we get a boost in traffic. However, all I see in programs like Woopra is facebook.com in the URL, but not the actual page. How do I determine which FB post with a link to our site is causing the increase in traffic? Best,
Reporting & Analytics | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Does prevent links from being included in Google Webmaster linking sites report?
My client has clean links in edit from nytimes.com. The links do not have nofollow tags. Google Webmaster stopped including links from nytimes.com in the external linking domains report and we don't know why since the URL is still live. The nytimes.com URL includes this tag in the source code: Are links on pages with NOARCHIVE still counted in Google Webmaster linking domains reports?
Reporting & Analytics | | ebenthurston0 -
Google Analytics help - exporting reports
Hey mozzers, A little help if you will. I am in traffic sources > sources > search > organic I am view keywords and comparing 1 month with another. Now I see what 1 keyword sends 1st month, 2nd month and % Change. I want to export this data to an .xls file. When I do, I end up with a file that shows what 1 keyword sends 1st month and 2nd month, but no % Change! I really need to include this in exported document.... Summary: Analytics hates me. 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | MirandaP0