Save Yourself! Referrer Spam is on the Rise.

Google Analytics is one of my favorite tools, and it can be really exciting when you get new referring sites in your reports, right? Well, not if they're stealing your code and faking traffic.

A recent perpetrator, fittingly named Forex Ninjas (www.forex-ninjas.com), has been popping up in Google Analytics reports everywhere. Here are the basics:

1. A website wants to increase its traffic artificially
2. They visit your website, view your source code and grab your analytics code (yes, it's visible to anyone)
3. They post your code onto their website (along with thousands of other site's codes)
4. They visit their own site and ta-da...they appear in YOUR analytics report as a referring site

But why?

As a mysterious new referring site, you become curious and visit their website, increasing their traffic. If thousands of people do this, then they have thousands of more impressions they can show to their advertisers. With such high traffic, they also pop up at the top of search engines like Google. The end result? They make more money.

There are many more out there like Forex Ninjas. Check out this great article from DMJ for more information.

What should you do?

Ignore it...or get a spam filter.

Many of our clients are seeing 50-100% increase in web traffic. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you use your analytics as a key tool for advertising, marketing and other business goals. You can create your own filter, or alternatively we can do it for you for 1/4 hour of content time ($20).

Keep an eye out for referral spam, and give us a call if you'd like some help eliminating it!