Semalt: How To Protect Your Analytics Data From Referral Spam

23.05.2018

Semalt: How To Protect Your Analytics Data From Referral Spam

Traf c is an important aspect of every online marketing campaign. In many cases, websites seek to grow their sales and subscribers through nding traf c. Common ways of getting traf c include SMM and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These and many other techniques seek to improve the online visibility of your site as well as performing numerous back linkage tasks. In other cases, individual may nd referral traf c as a gold mine. It forms the basis of a visitor who has an interest in your efforts and is within a niche. Converting such visitors to customers is very easy.

However, not all these links are legitimate. In many occasions, referral links come from users from a referral spam source. It affects websites and many personal accounts. Emails which are spam contain harmful software like malware and Trojans. In some case, they include links which may be from dangerous websites or scammers. Google analytics can detect and eliminate such traf c containing spam messages. From the Google Analytics, referral spam causes numerous bounce rates as well as short session duration.

Alexander Peresunko, the Customer Success Manager of Semalt Digital Services, takes a look on how to keep referral spam and bots away from your analytics data.

Bot ltering in Google Analytics

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23.05.2018

It is an important measure to include a spam lter. GA has the potential of differentiating a real link from a spam link. Using the lters, GA can block all the links or traf c coming from spiders and bots, not the actual traf c. There are numerous ways which a person can apply a referral traf c spam lter. Commonly, people check the hostname inclusion lter. This method ensures that the traf c coming to your website comes from the hostname itself and not any other source.

In the admin panel, this lter can work alongside other speci c customizations.

From here you can control the traf c you want using the Google Analytics view.

In some individual cases, ensure that you leave some un ltered light in the admin tab. Once you have an un ltered view, you are certain not to miss out any important information or email to your website which falls into the spam folder.

When creating lters, it is important to include your hostname alongside all other sources of data you expect. This feature can make the lter allow messages from some particular sources, which can easily look like spam. Spam lters are automatic and may not require any change at all once set up. However, it is important to keep updating their lter pattern expressions. You may nd other domains which may be necessary to include in your domain exclusion lists.

Conclusion Monitoring your traf c is essential for your online website. Most big companies invest some signi cant amounts of money in monitoring and controlling traf c. In other cases, these companies bene t from the way companies execute spam attacks. Spam emails contain many harmful entities which can make the parties behind interfere with your business or personal information. You can lter ghost referral spam from your website using Google Analytics through the methods above. This process can save your site numerous down times as well as some losses which come about due to successful spam attacks.

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