How to block bestecommerceseo.com spam in Google Analytics
Bestecommerceseo.com is a domain name owned by Semalt.com and used to promote their website and questionable SEO services. Semalt promotes their site by manipulating a blackhat tactic called referrer spam to make it appear as if a visitor was referred to your website from http://bestecommerceseo.com/seo2.php. If you analyze your website’s Google Analytics data you’ll see that it appears as if a visitor landed on a page on your site that does not exist such as yoursite.com/h/10016924.html. However, this is not the case, no one was actually referred to your website from bestecommerceseo.com.
If you visit http://bestecommerceseo.com/ in your browser, you will be forwarded to http://seo2.allthingsnuckear.com/?site=http://. If you use the search feature and click ‘START NOW’ you will be forwarded to https://semalt.com/?s=http://[search term]&ref=test2 and then to https://semalt.com/project/[project ID]. Semalt uses these pages to obtain information about you such as your email address, your domain name, and sensitive information from your social media accounts. Once Semalt obtains your email address, you can expect a lot of deceptive and incoherent email spam messages from them.
Semalt has been in the referrer spam for many years and it doesn’t seem like they will ever stop since it’s the only reason people know who they are. Previous domain names you might have seen in your Google Analytics data associated with Semalt include g-best-seo.com, promotion-for99.com, 9-best-seo.com, 7-best-seo.com, 9-reasons-for-seo.com, 16-reasons-for-seo.com, 17-reasons-for-seo.com, 15-reasons-for-seo.com, 9bestecommerceseo.com, 100-reasons-for-seo.com, 12-reasons-for-seo.com, local-seo-for-multiple-locations.com, autoseo-b2b-seo-service.com, seo-services-wordpress.com, seo-services-b2b.com, autoseo-wordpress-services.com, seo-wordpress-analytics.com, seo-for-wordpress.com, analytics-for-seo.com, autoseo-trial-for-1.com, seo-helper.org, free-seo-consultation.com, get-seo-help.com, seo-services-with-results.com, free-seo-help.org, better-seo-promotion.com, and many more. As partially mentioned before, the website uses this spamming technique to dupe people into searching for the website on a search engine such as Google and visiting the website by typing it into the address bar in order to obtain potential customers.
Referrer spam may sound harmless, but it can actually ruin your website’s analytical data and make it difficult to determine your sites real traffic data. The traffic acquired from fake referral traffic can affect most of the data in your Google Analytics reports. For example, the fake referral traffic will show that it lands on a single page on your site and leaves from the same page which creates a 100% bounce rate. If your site is targeted by a lot of referrer spam, you may not be able to identify your website’s actual bounce rate unless you filter the traffic out.
Block bestecommerceseo.com with a campaign source filter
A campaign source filter can be used to block all bestecommerceseo.com referral traffic in Google Analytics.
1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab > Click Filters on the right side in the VIEW section.
2. Click the + ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.
3. Add bestecommerceseo.com or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.
4. Select the Custom Filter Type.
5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add bestecommerceseo.com and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the web page. To add multiple URLs to the same filter you can make a Filter Pattern similar to this with a | between each URL: Example.com | Example\.com | bestecommerceseo.com
Block a referral path with a campaign referral path filter
A campaign referral path filter can be used to block single web pages if a site is targeting you from a single page.
1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab > Click Filters on the right side in the VIEW section.
2. Click the + ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.
3. Add bestecommerceseo.com or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.
4. Select the Custom Filter Type.
5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Referral Path in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add a permalink from the referred URL and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the web page
Block language spam with a language settings filter
Some spam may appear in your language settings as keywords, phrases, and searched terms. A language settings filter can be used to block language spam in Google Analytics.
1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab
2. In the “View” column select Filters and then click + Add Filter
3. Add a Filter Name: Language Spam (or something you can easily remember)
4. Go to: Filter Type > Custom > Exclude
5. Select Filter Field: Language settings
6. Add a Filter Pattern: \s[^s]*\s|.{15,}|\.|,
7. Click on the blue text that says Verify this filter to see a preview table of how this filter will work in your account. You should only see language spam on the left side of the table: filter-verification-language-spam
8. After you verify the filter click the Save button on the bottom of the page
