Block semaltmedia.com referrer spam

Semaltmedia.com is a new domain name used in referrer spam tactics associated with Semalt.com. Referrer spam is an ongoing issue for many webmasters, website owners, and professionals who provide website services. Referral traffic from semaltmedia.com can mess with your Google Analytics data and other analytical website metric providers. For example, referrer spam has an impact on the bounce rate of websites because hits from sources like semaltmedia.com only land on a single page and leave from the same page. It can also use bandwidth and cause confusion for new website owners who do not understand why they are getting referral traffic from suspicious websites.

The guide on this webpage will help you block semaltmedia.com referrer spam in Google Analytics and will also help you block semaltmedia.com referral traffic at the source using your website’s .htaccess file.

What is semaltmedia.com?

Semaltmedia.com is a website that engages in referrer spam indexing tactics aimed at your website analytical data. Semaltmedia.com referrer spam is designed to create repeated site requests to your website. The benefits that semaltmedia.com referral spammers have with this blackhat tactic is that it will help them advertise the website they want people to visit and it will also improve the spammers search engine ranking. The downside is that referrals from semaltmedia.com can interfere with your Google Analytics data and other metrics, as well as use a website’s bandwidth by creating repeat requests.

Referrer spam is a very questionable tactic used to promote online content. Spammers target the referral traffic of your website for several reasons:

• Spammers want to promote a specific webpage or program and want webmasters to visit the webpage or search for it online and visit it through Google results pages.
• Spammers want to boost their rank in Google Search and acquire backlinks.

Semaltmedia.com referrer spam is not entirely dangerous to your website. It will most likely not cause any trouble with how your website is accessed by your visitors or ranked by Google. However, in some cases semaltmedia.com spam may use up your website’s bandwidth and CPU by creating multiple site requests to your website. In other cases, the spam URL is served to your analytical data by traffic bots which create ghost hits and never actually land on your website.

How to block semaltmedia.com referrer spam in Google Analytics

To block semaltmedia.com referrer spam in Google Analytics follow the instructions below. Blocking semaltmedia.com referrer spam in Google Analytics will only mask the spam URL. To block the referrer spam URL at the sources please see the instructions below to block semaltmedia.com referrer spam using your website’s .htaccess file.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab and click All Filters.

2. Click the New Filter button to create a new filter.

3. Add semaltmedia.com 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 semaltmedia.com and click the Save button on the bottom of the webpage.

How to block semaltmedia.com referrer spam using your .htaccess file

To block semaltmedia.com referrer spam at the source using your .htacess file add the code below to your .htaccess file.

## SITE REFERRER BANNING
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semaltmedia.com [NC,OR]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

• Also see: How to block referrer spam