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You are here: Home / blog / Got Spam Bots?

Got Spam Bots?

in blog, search engine optimization on 08/20/14

SEO - getting rid of spam bots on analyticsIf you check your Analytics, you may be noticing some referral traffic from a website called semalt.com. If so, then the next course of action was to find out who semalt.com was and lo and behold you found that they were a, or rather claiming to be an SEO company. If you pull up the URL today you will find that it is much more generic now and you have to add your website URL to get started. By the way…. DON’T DO IT.

Let me go back a little.  Several months ago I noticed this referral traffic on my clients’ analytics and didn’t think too much of it at the time thinking it will go away. And, for a while the numbers did decrease, but they were still there. So, I did some research and found that there were other business owners, website developers and search engine marketers who were finding out the same thing. We wanted this “company” (using this term loosely) to stop “referring” traffic to our website(s). Folks have entered their url to stop, have emailed the “company” (notice there isn’t a contact us on the website now, just login or enter url and start now), tweeted, blogged and reached out to many forums.  Semalt.com has some representatives that are on these forums and reply that they aren’t spam (of course) and to complete the url to stop (which isn’t there now).  None of this has worked.

A little bit about spam and security

At this time, this is just spam. Spam, as you know, is something that you don’t want but get anyways, like junk mail, snail mail, email and etc. It isn’t something that is necessarily harmful to your website like a security breach, a hack or the like, but just really irritating.  This may change, but at this time, it is only spam and doesn’t cause a security issue.

How to filter Semalt.com off your analytics

I found several ways to filter out the spam – semalt.com from your analytics and you can find a few of those methods here – remove from analytics or exclude semalt crawler.  I followed these for all of my clients and we shall see if it is able to keep them out, forever.  I have noticed, prior to the filter, that the bots were growing like adding 69.semalt.com, 77.semalt.com and other extensions of semalt.com.  So it is important to use the filter type “that contains” the ISP domain “semalt.com” to be able to pick up all variations.

Another note, there is another spam bot to look for, similar to semalt.com, which have variations of kambasoft.com and I would suggest filtering both. They are both spam referrals or ghost spam since they never even landing on my site.

Another way, but you have to be a coder geek

I haven’t tried this one yet and I typically don’t get deep into code (over my head mostly) for my clients but you can give the advanced method to block semalt.com a try too.  It has to do with adding a snipit of code to your .htaccess file and I have attached some links for that too; Block Semalt or Block Referrer Traffic.

Lastly, I would encourage you to check out your analytics and please, by all means do your due diligence for your website and your clients.  Research this on your own and then do something about it, at least for your clients. Otherwise, you are reporting traffic that simply is.. bogus!

Should you have any questions on the filter, blocking or what the heck I was talking about, I’d love to hear from you. If you are interested in me taking the weight off of your shoulders with me helping you and your business with search engine optimization or maybe even paid advertising on Google/Yahoo!/Bing or social media marketing, please let me know.

~Kristen

18 Comments

About Kristen Day

Kristen is a small business owner and thus dedicated to other small business owners by helping them improve their online presence with having a professional and mobile responsive website, then implementing search engine optimization and pay per click advertising all of which are necessary 'evils' in the digital marketing sphere but enables small business owners the opportunity to compete with larger companies. When not in the digital arena, you can find her hanging with her girlfriends, husband, drinking a margarita or shooting competition (not in that order).

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Comments

  1. Beth Niebuhr says

    08/20/2014 at 9:08 AM

    Thank you for providing solutions for getting these nasty, lying people to go away! I can’t imagine how they justify to themselves what they are accomplishing.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:11 AM

      I know, I don’t get it either… what do hackers get out of doing stuff like this… other than bragging rights?

      Reply
  2. michael kawula says

    08/20/2014 at 9:35 AM

    Great info and like you said it’s only annoying for now. Who knows what it may change into later?

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:11 AM

      Oh gosh I know… just glad it’s only annoying now.

      Reply
  3. Aikyna Finch says

    08/20/2014 at 1:32 PM

    Thank you for sharing. I like the fact that you added options for the levels of operators.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:10 AM

      Thanks Aikyna!

      Reply
  4. Patty Kogutek says

    08/20/2014 at 4:35 PM

    I have a new respect for you and your job. You lost me after the first paragraph but if I ever have this problem (and I may have it now but don’t know it). I definitely will come to you and this well research article. Thanks

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:10 AM

      LMAO Patty… no worries, I lost myself on some of the “geek” stuff… but it’s stuff we need to know, right? LOL Thank you!

      Reply
  5. Yakini Pierce says

    08/21/2014 at 5:49 AM

    Thank you for this information. We get a lot of spam through the site and I am trying to find a better blocker. But, in the meantime, thank you for the tips. I will have to try this when I run analytics.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:09 AM

      Yes, I bet you do and hopefully this will help you get a better indication of the correct traffic.

      Reply
  6. Bek Davis says

    08/21/2014 at 8:52 AM

    Great topic and great solutions. I have book marked them!

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:08 AM

      Excellent, thanks. Surely you have seen stuff like this too being in the web design industry!

      Reply
  7. Jackie Harder says

    08/21/2014 at 9:01 AM

    Fascinating. Never thought of these fixes. Thanks for sharing your expertise on this.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:08 AM

      You got it Jackie.. thanks! 🙂

      Reply
  8. Edmund S. Lee says

    08/21/2014 at 3:25 PM

    Pretty cool stuff you’re sharing there Kristen. Especially enjoyed the “coder geek” explanation as I have a little bit of that in me 😉

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:08 AM

      As an SEO’er… I have a little coder geek in me too, but probably more limited than you! 😉

      Reply
  9. Roslyn Tanner Evans says

    08/21/2014 at 4:46 PM

    I’m afraid to look but I’m small potatoes now, so its unlikely anyone will spam me. The best is I’m on the alert. Thanks for info.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      09/03/2014 at 10:07 AM

      I’m small potatoes too Roslyn and spam bots hit everyone. Check it out! 😉

      Reply

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