How to block Yes-do-now.com spam in Google Analytics
Yes-do-now.com is a new domain name purchased and owned by Semalt.com and used by them to spam your website’s Google Analytics data with fake referral traffic. Semalt is a disruptive online marketing business who is notorious for utilizing the frowned upon ‘referrer spam indexing’ method to attract online traffic and potential customers. Semalt has been employing the blackhat SEO tactic for many years and they don’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
It’s not recommended to visit yes-do-now.com in your browser since it’s a spam site that ruins your Google Analytics data in order to market online services to you.
If you do visit yes-do-now.com you will be forwarded to a website such as http://seo2.bournemouthkawasakiracing.co.uk/?site=http://, http://seo2.inkstoneeditorial.com/?site=http://, http://seo2.clientsothersite.com/?site=http://, or other. The page you are forwarded to contains a text field where you can submit your website for an audit and 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 will then attempt to obtain information about you and get you to link a social media account to their website. If you provide Semalt with your email address you will receive deceptive spam messages from Semalt each day.
Is referrer spam harmful?
Referrer spam may seem harmless or somewhat of a nuisance but it can actually ruin your Google Analytics data by manufacturing incorrect information. For example, fake visitors from yes-do-now.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.
Also, keep in mind that no one was actually referred to your website from yes-do-now.com. No one used your bandwidth or took a step onto your site’s server, so yes-do-now.com referral traffic is just filling your reports with false information.
Create a filter to block yes-do-now.com
Here’s how to create a campaign source filter to block all yes-do-now.com referral traffic in Google Analytics.
- Open your Google Analytics account and go to Admin > Filters (on the right side in the VIEW section).
- Click the + ADD FILTER button.
- Create a Filter Name such as “yes-do-now.com filter” or “Semalt filter.”
- Select the Custom Filter Type.
- In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source.
- In the Filter Pattern text box, add yes-do-now.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 | yes-do-now.com