Easy Referal Spam Filtering
I know that most of us are plagued by referral spam and it is messing up our Google Analytics. Writing filters for all the referrers can take a long time and be hard to keep up with.
I found a free website that will add filters for the known spammers in one step and do it for all the sites you have in Google Analytics.
https://referrerspamblocker.com/
One thing I learned is that you should log into Analytics in a separate tab before you hit the "Start Blocking" button. I didn't the first time and the site just stalled.
You can see a list of the referrers that are currently blocked here:
https://referrerspamblocker.com/blacklist
The filters on your site wont be updated as new spam referrers are added to the list so you should re-run the tool occasionally to stay current. You can also help by notifying them of new ghost referrers you find. There is a FAQ section on the site where you can learn more.
I hope this helps clear some of your ghost traffic.
Tom
Recent Comments
22
Thanks, Tom. I tried it and it looks like it worked. I'll check GA again later to see if they change.
Barry
Good Barry! One thing I should mention is that it will only filter new incoming links. It wont remove the referral spam that is already in your analytics history.
There is a way to clean up your historical data but I haven't tried it yet. Here is the page:
https://referrerspamblocker.com/segments
It looks more complicated than the filtering.
Tom
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Thank you
I am bookmarking for future reference.
You're welcome Lisa. I hope it helps you.
Tom