How to block get-links-seo.com in Google Analytics

Get-links-seo.com is a domain name owned and used by Semalt.com to flood your Google Analytics account with fake referral traffic. The reason why Semalt fills your Google Analytics reports with fake data is to promote their website and services.

Once you become aware that your website is getting referral traffic from get-links-seo.com you might be curious as to why people are being referred to you from this website. You may end up visiting the URL in your browser.

If you visit the URL you will be forwarded to http://seo2.metamaterialtech.com/?site=http://. The page you land on asks you to submit your own website for a report. If you submit your site, you will be forwarded to https://semalt.com/?s=http://[search term]&ref=test2 and then to https://semalt.com/project/[project ID].

Semalt has been fully engulfed in embracing the referrer spam indexing method as a way to advertise themselves for many years. The online business is notorious for spamming Google Analytics with fake data including keywords as well and they don’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.

Is referrer spam harmful?

Referrer spam may seem harmless or simply a nuisance but it can actually ruin your Google Analytics data by filling it with fraudulent information. For example, fake visitors from get-links-seo.com appear to visit only one page on your site and leave your site from the same page. This creates a 100% bounce rate and measures to 1 page per session. Visitors also average 00:00:00 length of a session, among other changes to various site metrics.

Create a filter in Google Analytics

Here’s how to create a campaign source filter to block all get-links-seo.com referral traffic in Google Analytics.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to Admin > Filters (on the right side in the VIEW section).
2. Click the + ADD FILTER button.
3. Create a Filter Name such as “get-links-seo.com filter” or “Semalt filter.”
4. Select the Custom Filter Type.
5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source.
6. In the Filter Pattern text box, add get-links-seo.com and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the web page.

To add multiple domain names to the same filter you can make a Filter Pattern similar to this with a | between each URL: Example.com | Example\.com | get-links-seo.com