The reputation of several well-established web hosting companies like Hostgator and Siteground are under attack by referrer spammers. A third-party appears to be spamming the domain names of reputable web hosting providers into Google Analytics reports across the globe in order to potentually harm their reputations. Referrer spam is usually a blackhat SEO tactic designed to help desperate websites promote their online services and websites they want people to visit. It is a tactic typically endorsed by questionable websites like Aliexpress.com, Semalt.com, and Traffic2Cash.xyz.
There is a pattern to this new wave of referrer spam that leaves me to believe that the referrer spammer is someone linked to the domain-tracker.com domain name and several others like it. When you visit domain-tracker.com you will be forwarded to a new web hosting website such as Bluehost.com, Greengeeks.com, and others. Each time you visit the URL you are forwarded to an affiliate link that help the spammer generate income via an affiliate program. This is something that occurred in 2015 with the hosting-tracker.com referrer spam domain and Syfonix.com web hosting company.
@nickminers We aren’t quite sure we understand you, in case you refer to Google Analytics referrer spam please check https://t.co/tuaju0TPQ3
— SiteGround (@SiteGround) February 29, 2016
A spammer was using the hosting-tracker.com referrer spam link to spam Google Analytics reports across the globe. Once victims visited hosting-tracker.com they were forwarded to a affiliate link on the Syfonix website. Syfonix was able to stop the spammer and terminate their account. They did not pay any earnings to the spammer.
Furthermore, domain-tracker.com referrer spam first appeared on early February 28th, 2015. Several hours later the domain names of legitimate web hosting providers began to appear in Google Analytics reports.
Referrer spam is essentially harmless and it will now affect how your website appears in Google Search Results Pages. However, it ruin your website’s data monitored and provided in Google Analytics reports. Referrer spam can ruin things your like bounce rate and other information measured in Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion reports. It can negatively affect your bounce rate because the spam URL will appear to land on a single webpage on your website and leave your website from the same webpage, thus creating a 100% rate.
- Also See: How to block referrer spam
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