What is referrer spam?

[bangalorewebgur]

What is referrer spam?

[ITSGOLIVE]

Referrer spam is a includes fake referring domains, keywords, unique type of spam content that is visible through the web analytic dashboard, usually only to a website administrator. It shows up as either a fake traffic referral, a search term, or a direct visit.

[Fadia Sheetal]

Referrer spam is a unique type of spam content that is visible through the web analytics dashboard, usually only to a website administrator. It shows up as either a fake traffic referral, a search term, or a direct visit. The way it works is pretty ingenious.

A referrer — if you don’t already know — is a name or link that is shared via the HTTP header when a web browser navigates from one page to another. This information is generally tracked by your web analytics platform and offers you a bevy of information about your audience, such as where they came from.

The referrer can be replaced with any name or link. Some resourceful spammers have taken it upon themselves to change this information to a site they want to promote, and then they send multiple requests to your site. Since this information is tracked by your analytics platform, it will show up in your reports. This repeated hijacking of your reports is what we call referrer spam.

[deepakrajput]

These links are counted as spam by Google.

[fayeseom]

Referral spam is designed to look like legitimate traffic to your site. However, it’s actually fake traffic that takes advantage of vulnerabilities within Google Analytics’ tracking code. The point of referral spam is to bring attention to the spammer’s site and to get the site owner to visit it out of curiosity. This spam technique has been very effective on sites that are smaller and have less traffic, because the referral spam bubbles up to the top of the referral results in GA.

[spobitsseo]

Referral spam is a complex issue and in some cases we have seen spam traffic more than 50% from the traffic.