How to block seo-on-auto.com spam in Google Analytics

Seo-on-auto.com is a domain name owned by Semalt.com that is used to flood your Google Analytics data with fake referral traffic. The reason why Semalt fills your Google Analytics data with fake referral traffic is to get your attention and persuade you to visit the URL in your browser.

If you visit seo-on-auto.com you will be forwarded to http://seo2.amanopur.com/?site=http://. This new page asks you to submit your own website to “get your free website audit.” If you submit your site, you will be forwarded again to https://semalt.com/?s=http://[search term]&ref=test2 and then to https://semalt.com/project/[project ID].

Once you are on the Semalt site you will be asked for your email address and other information. If you provide your email address you can expect unwanted email spam messages in the future.

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 seo-on-auto.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 seo-on-auto.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 “seo-on-auto.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 seo-on-auto.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 | seo-on-auto.com