Semalt – Excluding Referral Spam From Your Google Analytics

Understanding and analyzing where your spiking traffic comes from is of utmost importance when it comes to search engine optimization. As a website owner, it’s also important to interpret your Google Analytics correctly to avoid making wrong business decisions. Small business owners have been raising issues regarding fake referral spam, a big problem that has been jeopardizing online marketers.

As an e-commerce website owner, Google Analytics is a tool that you should always use. Google Analytics empowers marketers to track down and analyze their GA reports. Webmasters and search engine optimization firms believe that referral spam and unwanted traffic is a problem that should be addressed.

Nik Chaykovskiy, a top specialist from Semalt Digital Services, takes a look here at the techniques that work on filtering out referral spam and fake spam on your GA.

Analytics spam blocker

This is one of the finest WordPress plugins that work to redirect referral spam and bots to block them from sneaking into your website. In the long run, blocking fake spam from your Google Analytics ends up protecting your data from being skewed.

The SpamScape tool

SpamScape is a search engine optimization tool that is developed to filter out unwanted traffic, bots, and fake spam. The tool will be working on delivering auto-generated statistics.

What you need to know about referral spam

Referrer spam works on spiking your traffic and making it look like genuine. Spammers and attackers take advantage of referrers to peak traffic to malicious pages and sites. Spammers skew your data by changing the header and making multiple requests, where the changed URL becomes visible in your Google Analytics data.

Impacts of bots on your GA reports

Google search engine uses bots to index websites. However, automated scripts and codes (bots) can be used for malicious purposes such as spreading malware, increasing fake traffic to a certain website, and scraping online users’ email addresses.

Spambots are known to create fake spam, referral spam, and bogus emails. According to IT professionals, referral spam can adversely affect your conversion records, skew GA reports, and affect traffic driven to your website. However, Google has been acting on fake spam and referrer spam as it introduced a procedural guide on how ‘known bots and spiders’ can be excluded from Google Analytics.

What you need to know about ghost referral traffic

Ghost referral traffic works by affecting data in the Google Analytics but does not hit your website. Practically, bots are very different to ghost referral traffic. Ghost referral traffic sends fake events and skews your organic search in the Google Analytics.

How referral spam and fake spam affects your SEO campaign

Referral spam renders a big challenge to e-commerce websites and marketing consultants executing SEO. Fake spam affects sites’ Google Analytics data, making business owners to perform tasks that jeopardize their campaigns. Referral spam is a black hat SEO technique used as a shortcut to earn rankings by spammers.

Nowadays, referral spam is used to harm websites performing well in the marketing industry by sending unwanted traffic to the site. However, it is not advisable to track down referral spam as they comprise of high levels of malware and viruses.

Referral spam, fake spam, and bot traffic affect weak websites and sites that are not completely configured. To protect your e-commerce website from being affected by fake spam, update your site’s plugins, software, and servers on a regular basis. Always be vigilant with who you affiliate with to avoid giving in to attackers, spammers, and referral spam.