Semalt Expert Talks About New Wave Of Referral Spam Wrecking Google Analytics Data

If you observe that a lot of referral traffic is coming to your Google Analytics, then you should be concerned as the hackers are trying to steal your information and site's details. Technology experts have provided us with a lot of tips, tricks, and suggestions on how to get rid of referral spam. They have laid out a number of methodologies to combat it and suggested potential solutions for your consideration.

These days, a lot of pieces of referral spam are damaging the data of Google Analytics. It is a matter of great concern for webmasters and contributors of the websites. The attacks greatly render the traffic referral reports and damage the Google Analytics properties to a great extent. It would not be wrong to say that this is one of the major problems for both small and large business owners.

Unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of referral spam, but the following tips, stipulated by Artem Abgarian, the Senior Customer Success Manager of Semalt, can prevent its arrival to an extent and can keep our website safe and protected.

Attackers generating Google Analytics spam

The question here is that why and how attackers generate Google Analytics spam? For webmasters, finding the answer of this question is not so tough. They can check the details of their Google Analytics and evaluate if their sites are receiving fake traffic. It is important for a website owner to generate organic traffic to his site. Referral spam is used by hackers to generate inorganic and fake traffic. The sales and leads of such referral programs are good for nothing. The hackers use these tricks only to spread viruses, malware, and to conduct their phishing attacks. Thus, if you observe that your site is receiving suspicious traffic from unknown sources, you should take measures on an immediate basis.

How does referral spam happen?

Now we are going to tell you how does referral spam happen? A lot of hackers attack your sites and steal your data using bots. Some of them even use a variety of botnets to trick a large number of people. Some attackers even generate fake hits and ghost views just to engage more and more webmasters. For this, they sent bots to your site and try to show it off as you are receiving organic traffic. Such attackers run The Google Analytics trackers and Java scripts to collect data from your servers. They then use this data for fraudulent activities.

Google Analytics

We are aware of the fact that Google Analytics is one of the most reliable, authentic, and well-versed products created to ensure safety and security of the websites. You can track how many unique views your site is getting using Google Analytics and other similar platforms. A code has to be inserted into your site for Google Analytics to get activated. This code is often stolen by hackers as it is easy to guess and can be used for their illegal activities.

It is clear to every webmaster that Google Analytics lets fifty properties in one account. Every property has its specific serial number. As a webmaster, it is your duty to make this serial number tough or impossible to guess. You may change it by visiting your Settings page.