How to block semrush.com referrer spam in Google Analytics
How to block semrush.com referrer spam in Google Analytics
Semrush.com (SEMrush) is a digital marketing website and service that has been around for quite some time. We recently noticed referrer spam URLs such as topseoservices.co are being used to forward the semrush.com website. Referrer spam URLs like topseoservices.co target your Google Analytics data with deceptive ghost traffic in order to make it look like web visitors were referred to your website from a third-party source. The spam traffic never actually lands on your website but it fills up your Google Analytic reports with false data in order to get your attention and provoke you to investigate the website. This type of deceptive web traffic is used to advertise the SEMrush website and generate potential customers; However, by them doing this, your website’s Google Analytics data can be negatively affected and essentially ruined.
Referrer spam from domain names that forward to semrush.com and referrer spam in general is a big issue for many webmasters, website owners, and anyone who values their website’s appropriate data. Fraudulent referral traffic from spam URLs can ruin your website’s analytical data. For example, the spam URL usually appears to land on a single webpage on your website and leave from the same webpage which interfere with your appropriate bounce rate. This is not the only Google Analytics data that semrush.com referral spam can ruin. It can essentially mix useless data into everything provided in Audience, Acquisition, Conversions, and Behavior reports.
Fortunately, we have created a guide to block semrush.com referrer spam in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter that targets the Campaign Source. This will stop semrush.com referrals from interfering with your data measured by Google Analytics.
Quick Links
What is semrush.com?
Semrush.com (SEMrush) is a search engine marketing (SEM) website and service that utilizes various referrer spam URLs to promote their website and services.
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.
SEMrush referrer spam is not entirely dangerous to your website. It will most likely not cause any trouble with how your website is accessed by your visitors or ranked by Google. However, in some cases referrer spam may use up your website’s bandwidth and CPU by creating multiple site requests to your website. In other cases, the spam URL is served to your analytical data by traffic bots which create ghost hits and never actually land on your website, which happens to be the case with this URL. They often target your GA ID number.
How to block semrush.com
This guide shows you how to block semrush.com referrer spam in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter that stops semrush.com referral traffic at the campaign source.
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 semrush.com 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 semrush.com and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage. You can add multiple domains to the filter. To add multiple items you can make a Filter Pattern like this: example.com | semrush.com | topseoservices.co
Also See: How to exclude all hits from known bots and spiders in Google Analytics (Bot Filtering)
