advice Buttons-For-Website.com Referal Spam Scam

[DomainVP]

Hi everyone.

As a part of business I rely on analytics to tell me where visitors are coming from, when visiting owned and managed domains.

For domaining this is important to me, because if [email protected] wants to make an offer and I've seen a lot of network traffic coming from a city where a business is located that has interest in a keyword, or incoming traffic from that shows its network domain; I know who I'm dealing with without having to ask them to email me from a 'business' email.

Recently I have seen a lot of referral traffic coming from "Buttons-For-Website.com" almost every single domain.

Of course this seemed very fishy, but I knew exactly what it was; referral spam.

Referral spam is where a site, specifically Buttons-For-Website.com, decides to send false referrer information to your domain in the hopes for that traffic to be picked up by log files. Some websites make their log information public, mostly by accident, and when Google crawls the log files it looks like the targeted website is linking to that referral.

This is a sneaky way to get link juice flowing your way from some poorly set up PR5+ domains. It also over inflates your analytics statistics showing you visits that aren't real interactions worthy of any attention.

The best thing you can do to combat this is to make sure that your log files are't showing; definitely hide your log.

If you are running Apache and have access to the .htaccess file you can add a quick snippet to deny the visitors to your entire site. For a how to Google "Deny visitors by referrer".

Just some good information to have, have a great holiday week!

 

[venturefile.com]

Yeah, this was an old day black hat trick to get large amounts of links from a variety of domains, but Google has long seen through this.. Didn't even know that people are still doing this.

Good info for new domainers and people who haven't seen this before!

 

[alien51]

Anyone tried to send this issue to [email protected] if they can shutdown this domain they are hosting ?

 

[DomainVP]

there is another business Semalt.com that has been doing this rampantly, hijacking computers to deliver botnet traffic via referrer spam. I've blocked both via .htaccess last night, using the following code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website\.com
RewriteRule .* - [F]

It has stopped all traffic from these sites coming the DomainVP site. All domains owned and managed are 301'd (redirected) to the site via a custom URL configuration in .htaccess.

 

[urljunky]

I have parked domains at bodis and recently alot of the traffic is refered from buttons-for-website.com. I checked the site and it redirects to sharebutton.net. and the traffic isn't good traffic. Absolutely no clicks, just crap traffic.

 

[enlytend]

Fwiw, semalt has or had an opt out page on their site - just for fun I tried it for one site a while ago and it seemed to work. But they seemed pretty dodgy and I didn't feel like giving them my site names, so they got added to my htaccess block list.

 

[alien51]

Both Semalt.com and Buttons-For-Website.com, are hosted by the same identical Netherlands web server, and regged thru NAME.COM.

Is that a coincidence ??

What is supposed to be the role of Registrars in shutting down these internet pests ?

I checked on Semalt in the past. They seem to be run by Ukraine guys. Is that a bad sign ?

Right now, their website does not even have anything telling them who they are, or if they have a physical address.

 

[urljunky]

semalt has a service similar to moz. I checked it out free for 7 days they update their statistics every day. you choose the key words for your website and they give you the results on a daily basis. That is probably why so many hits and crawls on websites. I believe they crawl search results all the way to position 100.

 

[DomainVP]

"7makemoneyonline.com" is another one hammering away at referral spam in this last week.
[blocked]

 

[Sperry8]

Within google analytics there is an area where you can add domains to exclude them (it's called "referral exclusion list"). If I add them there would this be the same as messing with my .htaccess file? (Which I prefer not to do)

 

[Nattydomain]

Im getting this a lot from this exact website. Should I do anything about it or leave it be? Also tons of request from semalt.com like this http://semalt.semalt.com/crawl er.php?u="my domain name for sale" what is this about????

 

[Asfas1000]

Im getting this a lot from this exact website. Should I do anything about it or leave it be? Also tons of request from semalt.com like this http://semalt.semalt.com/crawl er.php?u="my domain name for sale" what is this about????

Block them. Modify your .htaccess file as described in this thread.

 

[Nattydomain]

Shit I hate working with code....is there a easy way to do this?

 

[Asfas1000]

Nope. But it's very easy.

 

[Nattydomain]

I need to clean up some of these urls. Can someone show me how to go in and put a stop to this BS. It seems now they are attaching crap to my pics somehow.

 

[Ted.T]

Modifying .htaccess worked for me. So, you should try. It's not very difficult, but it really works.

 

[Nattydomain]

Modifying .htaccess worked for me. So, you should try. It's not very difficult, but it really works.

I know it works but HOW do you remove it? Me and code are like oil and water. One wrong move by ,e could F up things bad. Any video or walkthrough on this?

 

[enlytend]

Within google analytics there is an area where you can add domains to exclude them (it's called "referral exclusion list"). If I add them there would this be the same as messing with my .htaccess file? (Which I prefer not to do)

If you exclude them from your data view, it will keep them from skewing your data (going forward), or you could use a filter to exclude from your data table, but that only cleans up your reports - neither will keep them from visiting your site.

.htaccess (or a firewall rule, if you run the server) will let you block them completely. DomainVP posted the code in post #4 of this thread - https://www.namepros.com/threads/buttons-for-website-com-referal-spam-scam.839954/#post-4740360

The only other thing you would need is this statement at the top of your .htaccess file (if it isn't there already):

RewriteEngine on
​

If you already have a .htaccess file (it will be in your site's top level directory), save a copy before editing - that way you can put it back if things go wrong. If you don't have one, just create one (has to be called ".htaccess" - no extension, lower case, starts with the dot), cut and paste the RewriteEngine line I posted above and the code from post #4, save in your site's root (top level) directory and you're good to go. (Test your site and make sure things work in case you missed a character or made a typo.)

Easey, peasey .

 

[DomainVP]

Update to .htaccess file to block referral spam from recent mass offenders:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-your-website\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} best-seo-offer\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} blogs.forum69\.info [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} 7makemoneyonline\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ranksonic\.info
RewriteRule .* - [F]

 

[rosemoor]

Question from a novice:

My .htaccess file contains "RewriteEngine on" twice already; to do with "prettifying", for want of a better word, URLs on our site; apparently to do with certain requirements the application in which the site was built (concrete5) needs. These instances are both part of a "<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> ....</IfModule>" block; whatever that is exactly.

Do I need to repeat this "RewriteEngine on" command outside of these blocks for it to be functional to block referral spam, or does the command as written within those blocks suffice?

Thanks for your advice.

 

[DomainVP]

Hi @rosemoor , you only need RewriteEngine on once, you can copy and paste that snippet above and it will do the trick.

In the event that it does not, due to your custom application requirements, you can include it again. Usually one instance of the RewriteEngine will get the job done for most .htaccess scripts.

Best of luck.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

I have parked domains at bodis and recently alot of the traffic is refered from buttons-for-website.com. I checked the site and it redirects to sharebutton.net. and the traffic isn't good traffic. Absolutely no clicks, just crap traffic.

Dont understand why Bodis (and others) just doesnt ban the traffic at their end so no one ever sees it. buttons-for-website . com as well as semalt .com Its so annoying and its still occurring frequently.

 

[TimCulpepper]

If you exclude them from your data view, it will keep them from skewing your data (going forward), or you could use a filter to exclude from your data table, but that only cleans up your reports - neither will keep them from visiting your site.

That's exactly right. Google Analytics filters will keep your reports clean, but they won't stop the bot-traffic.

In any case, if you do decide to use the Google Analytics filters, then here is a fantastic guide:

http://www.ohow.co/what-is-referrer-spam-how-stop-it-guide/#Using-Campaign-Source-for-the-filter

 

[DomainVP]

rank-checker.online

Bombarded with exactly 500 spam referrals. Was a G-Analytics spam, as I block all referrers and there was no page title.