How to block dancgoods.xyz referrer spam in Google Analytics

Dancgoods.xyz is a domain name created on October 5th, 2021 with what appears to be the primary intent to spam Google Analytics data with fake referral traffic and promote services provided by Semalt on their website. Semalt is a third-party self-promoted “SEO Company” with different SEO-type products and tools. Website owners and those who use Google Analytics are certainly the demographic for the type of services alleged provided by Semalt.

Semalt has been utilizing spam for years, or at least, their “affiliates” have without consequence. Affiliates, or possibly people associated with Semalt, have even gone as far as to purchase thousands of domains and use every one of them to promote Semalt. Most domain names used to promote Semalt share records as other domain names used to promote Semalt so they are easy to identify and it would be strange to assume a third-party aside from Semalt would put this much money into such a large campaign over the years.

According to the domain name’s whois information (https://www.whois.com/whois/dancgoods.xyz), the owner has chosen to keep their information private which is suspicious for a legitimate “business” to do. Additionally, the domain name’s A record (https://viewdns.info/reverseip/?host=dancgoods.xyz&t=1) shows that the IP address is shared with other domain names that are flagged for spam.

Is dancgoods.xyz referrer spam dangerous?

Referrer spam is not dangerous but it can permanently change a website’s Google Analytics data and this can be problematic for website owners and webmasters who seek genuine data that isn’t clouded with fake information. Every visitor from dancgoods.xyz is registered as a new and unique visitor; therefore, the average bounce rate is 0%, average page sessions are 0, and the average session duration is 0:00. If this erroneous data is compiled over a long period of time it will permanently modify a website’s real analytical data unless taken care of.

How to block dancgoods.xyz spam

Follow these instructions to block dancgoods.xyz referrer spam in Google Analytics:

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to Admin > Filters.
2. Click the + ADD FILTER button.
3. Create a Filter Name such as “dancgoods.xyz” or “Referrer Spam.”
4. Select the Custom Filter Type.
5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source.
6. In the Filter Pattern text box, add dancgoods.xyz and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the web page.

To add multiple domain names to the same filter you make a Filter Pattern similar to: “dancgoods.xyz | apkara.com | example\.com” (include the “|” between each URL)