Google Analytics Referral SpamWhat it is and how to eliminate it.

Dave Goodwin | Scormi

What is a Legitimate Referral?

When someone arrives at your site by way of a link on another site.● Referrals have certain characteristics

including...

● Your hostname and a destination page

A valid referral link

Website “A” likes Joe’s ice cream and creates a link to Joe’s ice cream flavors page.

Joe’s has the best ice cream

Which looks like this to Google

<a href="http://joes.com/flavors.html">ice cream</a>

Host name Destination page

Automated referral spam

● Doesn’t come via a link on another site● Does not include your hostname● Has no destination page● Can result in (not set) entries in your

analytics reports● Interferes with the accuracy of your analytics

Why do they do it?

1. Eager analytics users see the spam links and click to see who is linking to them.

2. Which drives traffic to those sites.3. Where a sales pitch awaits.

Sweet! I got backlinks.

Some notorious Google Analytics referrer spam

● semalt.com● buttons-for-website.com● see-your-website-here.com● 4webmasters.org

How can you block referrer spam?Some solutions won’t work over the long term.

Google analytics exclude filters - No.● Requires ever more filters to keep up with them.

htaccess file - No.● Same problem. Need to continually add to it.● Editing the htaccess file is not for the average user

Can’t exclude but can include

Valid referral links will include your hostname.

joes.com / flavors.html

Host name Destination page

Google Analytics “Include Hostname” Filter

Filters missing or unwanted hostnames out of your analytics reports.

Follow these steps to set it up and test it...

First, sign in to your Google Analytics property

Click the Admin tab at the top then click Filters on the right.

Click the red +New Filter button.

Create new Filter (A) then name the filter (B). I used “Allowed hostnames.”

Change the filter type to “Include” option (A) then choose “Hostname” from the drop-down box.

Add your allowed hostnames in Filter Pattern

Use the “|” vertical line symbol and with no spaces, as shown on the next slide.

Format for Google Analytics Filter Pattern

yoursite.com|www.yoursite.com

There are other legitimate sources of traffic to your site that should also be included.● Google itself via its Google Translate service and the cached version

of Google search● Domains/hostnames of sites that you have 301 redirected to your

current site● Add these too to the ones above

|translate.googleusercontent.com|webcache.googleusercontent.com

Vertical line, no spaces.

The entire expression looks like this

yoursite.com|www.yoursite.com|translate.googleusercontent.com|webcache.googleusercontent.com

Where “yoursite.com” is the name of your site and .com or .net or whatever it actually is.

Test the filter. Click the Verify link to see the results.

Looks good. (not set) will be filtered out.

If a hostname you DO want appears on the right side, scroll up and add it the filter pattern. When you are satisfied, click Save.

Monitor your results

Using the Google Analytics “hostname include” filter should greatly reduce referrer spam.

Dave Goodwin, Co-founder Scormi | @dgoodwn

http://bit.ly/gareferralspamLink to this slide deck