Ask Semalt: What Is The Easiest Way To Get Rid Of Referral Spam

After installing Google Analytics, if you observe that your traffic has been increased haphazardly, it is a sign that your website is receiving fake views and you should take measures to get rid of them as early as possible.

Artem Abgarian, the Senior Customer Success Manager of Semalt, warns that unfortunately, there is no set way to remove spam from Google Analytics permanently. However, you can minimize the risks by adopting a number of ways.

Spam bots and their uses

One of the main reasons we get spam referrals is the spam bots. The hackers design them in a number of ways and try to engage a large number of people in hacking their websites. They send engaging links to your inbox and pretend that they can generate a lot of traffic. When you click on those links, you will see that your site is getting lots of traffic, but that traffic has nothing to do with reality. The hackers actually use spam bots to trick you.

Types of Referral Spam

The spam bots use a variety of methods for creating referral spam: via ghost referrals and crawler referrals. Google Analytics cannot evaluate or judge which is a crawler referral and what is a ghost referral. The ghost referrals appear when your Google Analytics is hit by fake or unknown traffic, while the crawler referral occurs when your site receives a large number of views from unknown sources. You need to remove the bots because you have to reduce the load on your servers and your websites. It is also important to get accurate data from Google Analytics for your site's health.

Main Spam Referral Domains

It would not be wrong to say that there are numerous spam domains but the famous ones are darodar.com, ilovevitaly.co, semalt.com, and buttons-for-website.com. It is important to stay away from these websites and other similar sites as they can damage your site and can ruin your Google AdSense.

Removal of the Well Behaved Bots and Spiders

You can remove the well-behaved spiders and bots from your data by adjusting your settings. If you don't block or remove them as early as possible, there are chances that your site will get damaged. Most of the bots and spiders look site-friendly, but they are actually damaging your online and offline data. Google Analytics offers a variety of deals, tips, tricks, and suggestions to remove them from your website. You can go to the admin section to check the new updates and adjust your settings accordingly.

How to Remove the Ghost Referrals?

After testing some deals, I have found that it is easy to block ghost referrals by installing and activating your filters. Make sure you use a variety of filters to maximize your online protection. You should also set up the valid hostname filters. For this, you would have to put your tracking ID or number on. Let me here tell you that the bots are very clever; they would not let any chance go away when your site or Google Analytics is not damaged.

Remove the Crawler Referral Spam

Once you have adjusted the above settings, the next step is to implement a valid hostname filter that will keep your site and Google Analytics safe from referral spam. You should not forget that the crawlers visit your site now and then and try to damage your data. That is why you should remove them from both your site and Analytics at your earliest.