How to block wakeupseoconsultant.com referrer spam

Wakeupseoconsultant.com is a domain name owned by Semalt.com and used by them to promote the services on their website. Semalt employs a tactic known as referrer spam to make it appear as if visitors were referred to your website from wakeupseoconsultant.com; However, no one was actually referred to your site.

When you are targeted by Semalt you will notice referrer spam from wakeupseoconsultant.com that lands on a page on your site that does not exist such as botcrawl.com/h/10016924.html. In addition, the referral traffic will appear to come from a page that also does not exist such as wakeupseoconsultant.com/seo2.php.

The purpose of this type of spam is to obtain your attention and persuade you to visit wakeupseoconsultant.com. If you visit wakeupseoconsultant.com you will be forwarded to another website such as http://seo2.greatamericansexdiet.com/?site=http://. The website asks you to “analyze your website and get an unlimited SEO checklist.” If you submit your website 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 heavily promoting themselves by the use of referrer spam for many years. They are notorious for spamming Google Analytics data across the globe and it does not seem to be slowing down any time soon. According to records, they appear to purchase new domain names to spam with just about every day.

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

A website that does not care about ruining your Google analytics data and using obnoxious methods to gain your attention cannot be trusted.

Create a filter

Here’s how to create a campaign source filter to block all wakeupseoconsultant.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 “wakeupseoconsultant.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 wakeupseoconsultant.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 | wakeupseoconsultant.com