Spambots are something that plagues many traffic analysis tools and website owners alike. We generally understand that “good bots” like the Googlebot visit and crawl a site to effectively index it, but bad ones like spambots don’t provide any value at all.
One of the worst types of spambots is the referral bot. This article covers this particular type and how to remove the majority of them from Google Analytics reporting to avoid their skewing the numbers.
What Are Referral Spam Bots?
A bot is a programmatic solution to access the internet. It performs functions in a pre-programmed sequence, or depending on what is found. Referral spam bots work a little differently. Instead of visiting a website, they use human nature and basic curiosity against us. They don’t visit your website – no, no, that’s too good for them! Instead, they visit your Google Analytics to register as a referral visit without accessing your site directly.
Why Are Referral Spam Bots Created?
The idea is to create curiosity on the part of the webmaster or site owner. You see a referral visit in the Google Analytics data and click on the link to examine the site where the referral came from. Doing so generates free traffic to the spammer’s website, or the one they are representing. When they do this often enough, it can help generate interest and sometimes revenue too.
How to Get Rid of Referral Spam in Google Analytics
How do you spot referral bot traffic in Google Analytics?
The tell-tale sign is an unusual, spammy-looking domain shown as having accessed the site. However, the bounce rate is 100% and the time on site is usually zero. Not even one second was spent on-site!
To filter them out follow this process:
- Create a new View by selecting View Settingsunder the VIEW section
- Select the Copy View button and Name the new View state
- Go to Acquisition, All Trafficand then Referrals to see all referral traffic
- Now filter by Bounce rateor Time on Site to find the zero records
- Grab a list of the spammy domains
- Armed with the list, use Google Analytics on the left column to select All Filters
- Then Add a Filter
- Hit the Custom toggle
- Tap the Exclude radio button, then select Campaign Sourcein the Campaign Source
- Complete the Filter Patterntext box
- Now go back to your spammy domain list and add them in something similar to the following format: spamyou\.|fakingusers\.
- Where spamyouor fakingusers is shown, replace that with the spammy domain names found, using the same format.
- Once you’re all done, move to Apply Filter to Viewsand select All Web Site Data. And then Save.
- And now you have a view that filters out the latest spam referral traffic.
Get Help When You Need It
Blocking spam in its various forms and providing accurate traffic reporting is tough to do. You don’t want to operate from the wrong data set that indicates you’re receiving more human visitors than is true. This can lead to making incorrect business decisions.
Get assistance from an IT specialist like Kortek Solutions that offers many services to support companies with technology-related issues including dealing with spam.
Tidying up Google Analytics to make it useful once again is time-consuming and problematic. New spam techniques are developed each week, which means you’re always running to catch up. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeking accurate website data because of how useful it is.