How to Stop Spam Bots From Messing up Your Google Analytics data
Have You Noticed Referrals on Your Google Analytics From Strange Domain Names Such as?
• buttons-for-website.com
• darodar.com
• trafficmonetize.org
• 4webmasters.org
• free-social-buttons.com
• site1.floating-share-buttons.com
If you answered yes you can be sure that you are not the only one. If you are wondering if those sites are indeed linking to your website the answer is an unequivocal no. So why are these websites doing this you might ask? Well let’s see, most people get excited when they see new traffic referrals from other sites and often end up visiting the referring source to view how their website is being linked to. This action will generate real traffic to those spam generating websites in exchange for automated computer traffic.
How Can These Spam Bots Effect my Website?
• Spam bots will misrepresent your Google Analytics data.
• Your site may struggle with SEO since they usually have a 100% bounce rate.
Filtering Spam Bots from Google Analytics Reports
This short video explains in easy steps how you can create filters for unwanted referrals:
How Can I Block These Annoying Spam Bots?
I don’t know why Google Analytics does not block spam bots automatically as I absolutely think they should! Here, you can copy and paste this directly into your htaccess file. If you are not sure how you can do this consult a web developer.
# Block Referrer Spam
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*trafficmonetize\.org/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*4webmasters\.org/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*buttons\-for\-website\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*darodar\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly.\.ru/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.org/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*ilovevitaly\.info/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*iloveitaly\.ru/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*econom\.co/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*savetubevideo\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*kambasoft\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*buttons\-for\-website\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*semalt\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*darodar\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]