Referrer spam is becoming a problem. If you’re not familiar with referrer spam, it’s traffic from bots that impersonate a referral link. The pseudo traffic is designed to make their domain show up in your site analytics so that you’ll visit the site.

Website referral spam has been a problem for several years and this form of artificial traffic to websites cannot be considered as real visitors who are genuinely interested in your products and services. Not only does it result in inaccurate reporting of website data, it can also cause overloading of servers. At EZ Marketing Tech we regularly have to inform our clients that their website traffic has not been as high or as valuable as they believe.

So if you’ve noticed a spike in referral traffic in your Google Analytics account, you might conclude that more people are finally clicking through to your website. However, the harsh reality is that a there is a good chance that this spike in referral traffic may have been the result of visits from spammy referral sources.

How Do I Block Referral Spam Traffic from My Website?

There are following ways:

1. Through .htaccess file
2. Through applying Google Analytics filters.
3. Through cPanel

Through .htaccess file:

Blocking spam referral traffic is most effectively accomplished through a .htaccess file. It can be instructed to block spammy visits by domain or IP address.

For Example: If you want to exclude Semalt and buttons-for-website.com, add the following command to your website’s .htaccess file.

## SITE REFERRER BANNING
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} seoanalyses.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]

Through applying Google Analytics filters:

The second method of blocking spammy referral traffic is through applying filters to your Google Analytics account.

If you’re looking to exclude traffic data from certain IP addresses, here is a quick guide:

1. Login to your Google Analytics account
2. Click Admin
3. Click All Filters
4. Give the filter a name
5. Select Predefined
6. Select ‘Exclude’, ‘traffic from IP addresses’ and ‘that are equal to’ in the boxes below
7. Enter the IP Address that you wish to exclude, and then click Save.

Applying filters is great for reporting purposes but it won’t prevent spam bots from visiting your website. The filters will just exclude the visits from the Google Analytics data. For best results, you must block these domains through your website’s .htaccess file.

Through cPanel

You can also block spam referral sites through cPanel.

1)Login into your hosting cPanel
2)Go to Security section and click on IP Deny Manager
3)Enter the IP address or domain name, which you want, to block
4)Click on Add

That’s all! Now check your Google Analytics next day to ensure you don’t see them in report.

If you don’t have the time, nor the slightest idea how to block spam traffic, allow EZMarketingTech.com (a leading SEO Company) do it for you. Call us now at +1 (855) 758-0200!