Anyway to block referral spam like Semalt?

Hi,

Can you give me more exact details of what’s going on here. What is happening, how it works, and what exactly needs blocked/addressed.

The more in-depth the better. I may not be able to address something directly, but if there’s a general pattern that can be found, then it can be addressed efficiently.

Thanks!
Paul.

Hi Paul,

I’m not the best at explaining stuff like this, but essentially spam sites are showing up in my statistics that are messing up my stats and increasing bounce rate. Semalt and buttons-for-website are the two biggest offenders. This is the thread I read last year that showed how to edit the htaccess file.

I just always get anxious editing files, so thought there might be another solution? If not I can re-edit it with their latest urls (they change them every few months, I’m sure because people are onto their scheme).

Thanks for looking into this :)!

Gotcha… I can see why this is such a pain. However, and I hope you’ll understand the position, this wouldn’t really come under security. It’s analytics spamming.

I think your best bet here is .htaccess, or perhaps filters in your analytics tools. Both are viable.

The problem here is that since they don’t present themselves as robots, it doesn’t scale well trying to “fight” them.

I wish I had a better answer for you in this case, but I have to be really discerning about what goes into the plugin and what must be left out.

Hope you understand.
Thanks,
Paul.