How to block life.ru referral spam in Google Analytics

3 Methods: Campaign Source Filter  |  Campaign Referral Path Filter | Language Settings Filter

What is life.ru referral spam?

Life.ru is a website that engages in an unethical blackhat SEO tactic known as referrer spam (or referral spam). The referrer spam website will utilize various blackhat methods in order to promote itself by spamming Google Analytics accounts across the world with fraudulent referral traffic. If you notice life.ru referral traffic in your Google Analytics data it does not mean that someone was actually referred to your website. The spammer utilizes this method in order to obtain your attention and provoke you to visit the URL that was referred to your website.

The downside to life.ru referral spam is that it can ruin your Google Analytics data and make it hard to monitor your website’s appropriate information. The traffic acquired from fake life.ru referrals can affect most of the data in your GA reports. For example, the referrals will appear to land on a single webpage on your website and leave from the same website and this will create a 100% bounce rate. If your website is targeted by referrer spammers you may not be able to identify your website’s actual bounce rate unless you filter the traffic out.

Although referrer spam can ruin your analytical data it will not harm your website or affect your website’s SEO, including your rank in Google search results pages. This is simply spam that wants to get your attention.

The spammer will utilize various tactics in order to make it look like your website received referral traffic from life.ru even though it really did not. This type of web traffic is a specific type of web traffic known as “ghost traffic.” The spammer essentially sends phantom visitors to your website’s Google Analytics account in order to make it appear as if someone visited your website from the referral URL.

Referrer spammers usually target your website’s data for several reasons:

• Referrer spammers want to promote a website and want you to visit the webpage or search for it online through Google search engine results pages.
• Referrer spammers want to boost their rank on Google search engine results pages by creating backlinks. They do this by logging requests into your website’s access log, which is then crawled by Google’s indexing bots and seen as a backlink to the spam site.

Campaign Source Filter

A campaign source filter can be used to block all life.ru referral traffic in Google Analytics. To block a specific path on the domain use the Campaign Referral Path Filter below.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab > Click Filters on the right side in the VIEW section.

2. Click the + ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.

3. Add Life.ru or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.

4. Select the Custom Filter Type.

5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add Life.ru and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage. To add multiple URLs to the same filter you can make a Filter Pattern similar to this with a | between each URL: Example.com | Example\.com | Life.ru

Campaign Referral Path Filter

A campaign referral path filter can be used to block single webpages.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab > Click Filters on the right side in the VIEW section.

2. Click the + ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.

3. Add Life.ru or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.

4. Select the Custom Filter Type.

5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Referral Path in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add a large portion of th permalink from the webpage’s URL you want to block and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage

Language Settings Filter

A language settings filter can be used to block language spam in Google Analytics.

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab

2. In the “View” column select Filters and then click + Add Filter

3. Add a Filter Name: Language Spam (or something you can easily remember)

4. Go to: Filter Type > Custom > Exclude

5. Select Filter Field: Language settings

6. Add a Filter Pattern: \s[^s]*\s|.{15,}|\.|,

7. Click on the blue text that says Verify this filter to see a preview table of how this filter will work in your account. You should only see language spam on the left side of the table: filter-verification-language-spam

8. After you verify the filter click the Save button on the bottom of the page