23.05.2018 https://rankexperience.com/articles/article1852.html 1/2 The Semalt Islamabad Expert: What Is Referrer Spam & How To Avoid It? If you monitor the trafc of your website daily and think that it's gaining traction, the chances are that referrer sp

23.05.2018

The Semalt Islamabad Expert: What Is
Referrer Spam & How To Avoid It?

If you monitor the traf c of your website daily and think that it's gaining traction, the chances are that referrer
spam has hit your blog. In your Google Analytics account, you might notice more and more inbound links which
appear to be adding quality traf c to your site, but it's absolutely wrong. When you keenly analyze the referrer
sources of the inbound links, you will see some strange domain names such as best-seo-offer.com, Get-Free-Traf c-
Now.com, 4webmasters.org, best-seo-solution.com, buttons-for-website.com, 7makemoneyonline.com,
blackhatworth.com, ilovevitaly.com, priceg.com, resellerclub.com, prodvigator.ua, savetubevideo.com,
kambasoft.com, screentoolkit.com, and superiends.org.

A top specialist from Semalt, Sohail Sadiq, assures that getting rid of referrer spam with some techniques is
possible.

What is referrer spam?

When you have just developed your website and did not do SEO, the chances are that your site will receive no
traf c. But if it receives traf c from the unknown sources, you should evaluate where this traf c comes from and

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23.05.2018

how it interacts with your Google Analytics account. Some other domain
names you should bear in mind are socialseet.ru, o-o-8-o-o.ru,
vodkoved.ru, iskalko.ru, myftpupload.com, luxup.ru, websocial.me,
slftsdybbg.ru, ykecwqlixx.ru, seoexperimenty.ru, econom.co,
darodar.com, edakgfvwql.ru, adviceforum.info. Any of the referrer spam
is added to your Google Analytics account by the spammers, and the
bounce rate is up to 100%. Anything like the search engines, links on
other sites, banner advertisements and emails can redirect you to these
suspicious websites. Technically speaking, it sends HTTP requests to your
Google Analytics account and the same request is then forwarded to your
web server. You would have to locate the IP address of the referrer spam and get it blocked in your Google Analytics
account. A referrer is useful in the statistical web analysis and determines which websites generate the most traf c.
Moreover, it plays a signi cant role in formulating effective and powerful marketing strategies and helps you ensure
your site's security on the internet.

How the spammers use it?

The HTTP referrer is always open to modi cations and can be edited easily, which makes it suspicious for
webmasters and bene cial for spammers. The hackers and spammers usually change the referrer property to a web
page they want to promote. There are two main reasons why they choose to do such things.

To increase tra c

The spammers develop automated scripts which generate visits to hundreds to thousands of sites with fake referral
URLs, usually more than ten visits per day. The webmasters and bloggers can notice an increase in the traf c and
the impressions are generated in their Google Analytics accounts in a large number. These fake URLs are often used
to trick with your AdSense account and to edit your log les. You can lter them out in your Google Analytics
account so that the spammers' sites receive no traf c on your behalf.

To increase external links

Some of the blogs and sites may publish a large number of refers and may include the links back to their sites. This
would let the spammers and hackers generate lots of backlinks for their own websites, which would ultimately
improve their search engine ranking.

How to stop the referrer spam?

If you manage a WordPress website, you can easily stop the referrer
spam by installing a plug-in named as Stop Web Crawlers. This plugin can
either be downloaded from the web or can be borrowed from a friend.
Once installed, this will protect your WordPress site from the referrer
spam to an extent.

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