Fake copyright claims are targeting your Google Analytics data with referrals

If you are a website owner or someone involved in monitoring website data accumulated and projected through the Google Analytics service you may have noticed an increase in referral traffic from suspicious URLs that claim to be associated with the domain name copyrightclaims.org. Copyrightclaims.org is a fraudulent website designed to hit your Google Analytics data with misleading ghost traffic. If you receive strange referral traffic from this website do not be alarmed. There is no “claim” against you and your website. The spam URL is engaging in a blackhat SEO tactic known as referrer spam indexing.

The fake copyright claim spam URL is designed to create fear, anxiety, shock, or suspicion. It is basically a provocative domain name that catches your eye and may lead you to suspect that someone filed a copyright claim against your website.

When you visit the fake copyright URL you will be forwarded to online retail shops like alibestsale.com. Alibestsale.com is also notorious for spamming Google Analytics with fake referral traffic from a variety of spammy URLs. Both domain names are owned by the same entity and sit on the same server according to their records. Their records also suggest that there are many more eye-catching URLs which will be used for spam purposes in the future.

Referrer spam is designed and used to get you and other people to visit the websites that spammers want you to visit. In some cases, it can also help them boost their rank in Google Search results pages by creating backlinks off of your access logs. It is not essentially harmful to your website but it can mess up your website’s data and sometimes use bandwidth if tactics aside from producing ghost traffic are used to spam your account.

Ghost traffic does not actually land on your website. It targets your Google Analytics ID number. For example, if you own a domain that is not hosted but somehow has a GA account you will notice spam URLs landing on your un-hosted domain.

You can block referral traffic and referrer spam from any URL by using our guide below:

• How to block referrer spam