Block Responsive-test.net Referral Spam in Google Analytics

Responsive-test.net is one of the latest referrer spam URLs we recently discovered. Responsive-test.net referrer spam is designed to fill your Google Analytics data with fake responsive-test.net referral traffic in order to acquire your attention and persuade you to visit the website. If you visit responsive-test.net in your browser you will be forwarded to a webpage on the youresponsive.com domain such as http://youresponsive.com/device?url=botcrawl.com.

Responsive-test.net referral traffic may appear to land on a single page on your website from a sub domain on the responsive-test.net domain name similar to “8393791.responsive-test.net.” It uses a unique URL string for each website is spams so it can forward users to a specific webpage tailored to the website. This means that each time it spams a new analytical account and website it will change its webpage it uses to spam Analytics reports.

Responsive-test.net referral traffic did not actually land on your website. It is a type of referral traffic known as ghost traffic that targets your Google Analytics account and website at random. If your Google Analytics account is being targeted by these referrer spammers at random you will notice responsive-test.net referral traffic mixed into your Google Analytics reports.

Responsive-test.net promotes the yourresponsive.com website and the service it provides; a “free responsive tool for your website.” The webpage basically shows you how your website looks on multiple devices. Even though the website may work as it is promoted referrer spam can be a nuisance for people who monitor Google Analytics reports and value their website’s real data.

The good thing is that responsive-test.net referral traffic cannot harm your website’s bandwidth since it does not land on your server and it cannot harm your website’s rank in Google search results pages. However, it can ruin your website’s analytical data measured by Google Analytics. In some cases, referrer spam from bots and crawlers can use your bandwidth and create backlinks in your website’s access logs, but this is not the case with responsive-test.net referral traffic since it utilizes ghost traffic to create faux data in your analytical reports.

Responsive-test.net referral traffic can be a bad thing for people who value their website’s appropriate data. If value your website’s ‘real’ data you will want to block responsive-test.net referral spam from mixing into your website’s analytical data before it gets out-of-control. For example, the responsive-test.net referral typically “lands” on a single webpage on your website and leave your website from the same webpage. This creates a 100% bounce rate and if this happens multiple times per day it can be catastrophic for your real bounce rate. This is not the only data affected by responsive-test.net referral spam. Data that this domain name and referrer spam from other spam URLs such as domain-tracker.com can affect includes pretty much every detail measured in Google Analytics Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions reports.

Referrer spammers target the referral traffic of your website 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.

Block responsive-test.net referral spam in Google Analytics

Block responsive-test.net referral spam in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter to stop responsive-test.net referrer spam at the campaign source. This is the method recommended by Google to block referrer spam in your Google Analytics account.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab and click All Filters.

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

3. Add responsive-test.net 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 responsive-test.net 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 | responsive-test.net | youresponsive.com