Spam in our Analytics?!... oh my!
Unfortunately, spam is an everyday part of our lives and we just learn to find new ways of filtering it out. As we develop these filters, spammers develop new ways to get through them.
As I was gathering some data for a client report, I noticed some strange referral URLs: golbnet.com and thebesthosting.org. After some initial research it became clear that this is spam. You can also find web.com as a spam Hostname (Visitors > Network > Hostnames).
If you apply a few filters, you should be able to exclude the data. Google claims these referrals should not affect any PageRanks negatively. (we’ll see how they deal with this)
To apply the Referral filters try this:
Select your Website Profile > Edit > Add Filter
Filter Name “Golbnet” (example)
Exclude > traffic from the domains > that contain
“golbnet.com”
Not Case Sensitive
To apply a filter to the Hostname try this:
Select your Website Profile > Edit > Add Filter
Filter Name “Web.com” (example)
Choose Custom Filter radio button
Exclude > Filter Field = “Hostname” > Filter Pattern = “web.com”
Not Case Sensitive
Good Luck!
