The reputation of various web hosting providers is under attack by referrer spammers and Bluehost.com is one of them. Others include Hostgator.com, Siteground.com, Stablehost.com, Godaddy.com, and a few more. Referrer spammers have been trying to harm the reputation of possible competitors by spamming fake referral traffic of well-established web hosting providers into people’s Google Analytics reports. If your Google Analytics account has been targeted by referrer spammers you will notice an increase in referral traffic from bluehost.com, other web hosting websites, and similar domains.
Referrer spam is a blackhat SEO tactic that is usually used by desperate spammers to promote a website they want you to visit. They will mix fraudulent web data into your Google Analytics reports in order to get your attention and persuade you to visit their websites. However, sometimes referrer spam and things like “Google Bombing” are done to hurt the reputation of competition or cause them frustration. This is the case here. Web hosting companies like Hostgator (which we use) and Site5 have absolutely no purpose to spam Google Analytics reports. They are well established web hosting companies that have no reason to consider utilizing this blackhat SEO tactic.
Referrer spam is essentially harmless to your website but it can ruin your real Google Analytics data. For example, 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. This will create a 100% rate and if this occurs numerous times each day your bounce rate can be very high.
Bluehost.com referral traffic does not actually land on your website. It is a type of traffic called ghost traffic that simply sets aim at your Google Analytics account and random websites across the world.
How to block Bluehost.com referral in Google Analytics
This guide shows you how to block Bluehost.com referrals in Google Analytics by creating a filter that stops excludes Bluehost.com referrer spam at the campaign source.
1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab and click All Filters.
2. Click the ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.
3. Add Bluehost.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 Bluehost.com and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage. To add multiple URLs to the same filter you can make a Filter Pattern similar to this with a | between each URL: example.com | Bluehost.com
Also See: How to exclude all hits from known bots and spiders in Google Analytics (Bot Filtering)
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