We set another record for traffic at North Carolina Divorce this past week. We had more visitors than we’d ever had before. Why? Was it the beautiful design? Was it the intelligent content? Was it the fascinating lawyer biographies or intriguing stories from our former clients?
No, it was spammers in Russia. Yep, that’s what caused our bump in traffic.
These spammers are using computer trickery to direct traffic to our site, and it looks like real traffic to our analytics software (we use Google Analytics). It’s not. It’s simply a spam bot dropping by to screw with our server.
They’re likely doing it to you as well. It’s a smart, devious, tricky effort to get attention.
How to Identify Referral Spam
When you look at your stats, you think you’ve had more visitors. You get curious about why you’re getting more traffic, so you explore your stats. You dig in to the information about the referral source of the traffic (is it Facebook, Twitter, or another site?). As you dig, you find that it’s not coming from where you expected. You discover that it’s coming from some other site, and your analytics software reveals the web address of the referrer.
What do you do?
Of course, you type in that URL and go visit the site. That’s exactly what the spammer was hoping you’d do.
When you get there, the site pitches you on a search engine optimization service, a lead generation service, or some other scummy sort of offering. It’s kind of incredible that they think this will bring them business. Really—you ruin my stats and then expect me to come buy something from you? It’s the weirdest form of marketing I’ve ever encountered. I can’t imagine that it works, but it probably does.
These spammers get your attention, attract you to their site, and then try to sell you their services. It’s an odd and mildly malicious form of genius.
Should you simply be fascinated by their marketing approach and leave it at that? Nope, you should take action. You want to block these spammers. You don’t want them on your server. Not only do they skew your stats, but they also add load to your server and create a security risk. Who knows what they’re doing while they’re on your site? You don’t want to find out.
There are ways to block them and keep them off your server. We’re doing it now, and our stats are cleaned up (and that record-setting day turned out not to be a record).
How Do You Stop the Spammers?
Moz.com has a guide, How to Stop Spam Bots From Ruining Your Analytics Referral Data, and it’s great. Ohow.com takes a slightly different approach: What Is Referrer Spam and How to Stop It. If you do this work yourself, then digest the material and get to work. If you’re using someone to help you out, then pass this info along and ask for help.
Many of us assume our stats are correct, and we get giddy when the numbers go up and sad when they come down. Be aware that your reaction to the stats might not be related to reality. Find out whether you’re getting spammed and, if you are, take action to correct the data. Most importantly, don’t go buy anything from the spammers.
