Google Analytics, this was the first Web Analytic tool I heard about and also used this tool to check my blog’s traffic stats. Undoubtedly this is the best free web analytics tool available right now.
But the problem with Google Analytic Tool is that it shows spam referral traffic in its traffic stats which is a kind of annoying. When I started blogging I used to check traffic stats everyday and later on I started noticing that my blog was getting too much referral traffic daily on my blog from many websites and I wasn’t promoting my blog on those sites.
Wasn’t aware back then about spam traffic but soon I came to know about this. And that was the time when I started searching for solution to fix this.
How I Removed or Blocked Spam Referrals?
I filtered out all the spam website URLs from GA, and that’s what all you need to do if you are receiving spam referrals on your site.
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What is Spam Referral Traffic?
Thing that I have noticed most of the time when you visit these websites they are offering any services. And they this trick to drive visitors to their site by spamming Google Analytics. You will be agree with me on this, try check this out by yourself by visiting the site that’s spamming your Google Analytics. Most of the times they are offering you some kind of services.
I think Google Analytic Team can give you better answer for this but as much I know we are getting spam referral traffic because Google Analytics is not able to stop spammers to ruin our traffic stats.
Spammers just use it as marketing tactic to drive traffic to their site that’s it. Hope GA team will soon do something about this 🙂
Some of the Spam Referral Domains I have Blocked Recently:
buy-cheap-online.info
lifehacĸer.com
boltalko.xyz
brateg.xyz
www1.free-share-buttons.top
sharebutton.to
social-buttons-ff.xyz
build-a-better-business.2your.site
smarter-content.for-your.website
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But How can I Stop or Block Spam Referral Traffic in GA?
One of the easiest way to stop referral traffic in GA is to filter your traffic stats. This will help you to filter spam referrals from your websites’s traffic stats so that you can see the original and real website traffic stats.
What Will Filtering Traffic Do?
By filtering traffic Google Analytics will stop showing traffic from particular domains that you add in filter like I have recently started getting referral traffic from lifehacker.com, so to stop referral traffic from this domain I just added this domain in my filter and GA stopped showing traffic from this domain.
[Step By Step] – How to Add filter in GA?
Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and then go to admin section and navigate to All Filters > Add Filter.
Give it a name (Like – Stop Spam Referral Traffic or Whatever you wanna name it 😉).
Then choose filter type Predefined or Custom
Please check the settings that you need to setup for blocking referral with Predefined filter below.
This will block all the traffic that you are getting from specific domain you will add in hostname. Now verify & save your filter.
Check the image below for Custom filter setting for blocking spam referral domains.
You can add multiple website URLs in Filter Pattern (4webmasters.org|share-buttons.com|social-buttons.com|free-floating-buttons.com) if you are getting spam traffic from more than one website.
Trust me, this is the simplest way of blocking referrals in GA 🙂
You can also check out other setting in GA to block referrals by IP address, Country, City Language etc. There are many more options that you can try out these depends on where & how much referral traffic you are getting. If you are getting too much referral traffic from a specific country with many deferent domains then blocking those with country can be easier than adding every single domain manually in filter.
But still I will not recommend blocking traffic by country or city because it may also block organic or real referral traffic too.
Adding Websites to Referral Exclusion List:
Another simple way that I am using to block specific domains referral traffic is adding spam website URLs in Referral Exclusion List.
I found this bit easier then adding filter, all you need to do is go to the Admin section in GA. Then to your Property > Tracking Info > Referral Exclusion List and now add all websites here that you don’t want to get listed as referral in your GA traffic stats.
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Take a look at the image below for reference. I have blocked around 90+ spam referral websites on Referral Exclusion List 😉
Whenever you get a spam referral next time don’t worry just navigate to the Referral Exclusion List and add that website here.
Conclusion:
Hope this will help you to overcome referral spam traffic issue in Google Analytics. Let me know if you need any help or have any questions, through comments 🙂
