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How to Block WordPress Referrer Spam in Google Analytics Guide

Are you worried that you’re acquiring lot many referrer spam daily in your Google Analytics? Referrer spam is a method to pass out fake referrer information to the websites. Such spam links then emerge in the users’ analytics, and can direct you to click on malevolent websites. For a year or two, referral spam has been in huge trend. Few corrupt spammers bring up fake traffic to your website from impractical looking URLs such as blog.avari.io, chinese-amazon.com, econsultancy.com, etc.

Here we will exhibit how you should obstruct the WP referrer spam into the Google Analytics.

Start with Google Analytics

If you are not utilizing the Google Analytics on your WordPress website, then you can try out below the simple method of making installation of Google Analytics within your WordPress.

GA being a brilliant free tool permits you to notice how the users make interaction with your site. You can easily view the number of users going through which post pages of your website, track clicking on links, etc. For those users who have been using Google Analytics, the referrer spam problem can be fixed in your reports of Google Analytics.

Referrer Spam- What is it?

Owners want their websites to be observed keenly. Also when other types of websites are link to your articles, it makes you content. Referral spammers take the benefit from this need as they send fake referrer URL along with automated scripts to hundreds and thousands of websites. Then this URL is visible in your Google analytics or on any other statistics service that you are utilizing as the referrers. Reflecting on the detail that they would put effect on numerous websites, it is probable that many numbers of users may want to find out these websites when they view them in their referral accounts.

Why you want to be concerned about Referrer Spam?

Some users state that the referrer spam is somewhat risk-free till you click on links. If you own small or medium sized sites, then the referrer spam can damage your websites analytics reports. If you’re thinking of selling your site and share such report with keen buyers, these spam links can give an awful intuition.

How to deal with Referrer Spam?

For the security of the website, mostly Sucuri is used by skillful developers. Sucuri has the potential to protect your website against Trojans and malware, and it can also block the referrer spam.

The Sucuri website firewall easily blocks many recognized terrible referrals that are defaulting. Sucuri team often inserts fresh referral spams on the catalog, in addition to even keenly scrutinizing their actions.

Steps to follow to identify and fix referrer spam

Step 1: Move to the Referrals report in your Google Analytics account, and next arrange the report through bounce rate in the descending order.

Step 2: View the referrers that are with 100%, or with 0% bounce rate, and also 10+ sessions that are most probably spam referrers.

Step 3: If any of your distrustful looking referrer fits in the list of websites such as semalt.com, semalt.semalt.com, blackhatworth.com, buttons-for-website.com, etc, then it is considered as a spam referrer, and there’s no requirement for you to look into these sites to confirm.

You can find out the extensive list of spam referrers from- https://perishablepress.com/blacklist/ultimate-referrer-blacklist.txt

Step 4: If you aren’t able to verify the individuality of your uncertain looking referrer, you’ve to acquire risk factor, and also make a visit to the websites to ensure that it is a genuine website, and also links to your own site. Ensure to have installation of anti-virus software on your site before you thinking of visiting such kinds of websites. Without having anti-malware software in your website, these suspicious websites have a tendency to infect your PC the moment you visit them.

Step 5: When the identity of bad bots is verified by you, you can quickly block them by getting into their website again. You can put a block to the spam referrer via custom advanced filter.

Block Referrer Spam in WordPress Utilizing the Plugin

Numerous WordPress plugins are available that can assist you to maintain referrer spam to the least amount. Such WP plugins make use of web services which are checking dynamically the referral spam sites, and also they utilize that list in order to block out the referral spam. Therefore, you’ve to swiftly install and then make active SpamReferrerBlock plugin. When activation is completed, you have to visit to the Setting>Spam Referrer Block for constructing the plugin. On the setting page of plugin, you will view the text portion so as to craft your individual custom blocking lists. Thus you can effortlessly update that list along with the latest up-to-date version by hitting on the click button of the download from the server button.

About the Author –

Kristin is a writer and an active blogger having experience more than 4 years in content marketing. She works for Hosting Facts as a content marketing expert.