The Take Of Semalt On Rogue Sites – Impact On Your Data

1. 23.05.2018 The Take Of Semalt On Rogue Sites – Impact On Your Data Rogue sites and referrer spam have been messing up with online businesses' statistics and data for a long time without their consent. A good number of B2C and B2B businesses assume that the matter of rogue sites directing traf?c to their sites is handled by Google Analytics automatically, a situation that messes up with small businesses data. Ryan Johnson, one of the leading experts from Semalt, provides some helpful information in this regard to help you understand the impact of rogue sites on your data. Spammers and opportunists are now taking advantage of tracking codes to drive fake traf?c to your and sneaking malware to your website. By putting your GA tracking code to your site, visits to their site show up in your Google Analytics automatically. This can adversely affect your website in two ways. First of all, malware and bot traf?c can take control of your website jeopardizing with your data. And second, visitors redirected to your site might click back your pages affecting your bounce rates. When clients visit your website and continue clicking through your pages, the bounce rates go high, putting your converting keyword in a good position to be ranked high in the algorithms. However, visitors clicking back through your pages lower your bounce rates, an instance that makes the algorithms to mark your keyword as irrelevant. This is where the need to block rogue sites and referrer spam from visiting your site comes in. https://rankexperience.com/articles/article1384.html 1/2

2. 23.05.2018 Tips on how to identify and mark rogue sites Creating a hostname report with drill down and hostname dimensions are used to identify rogue sites. Metrics of 'unique visitors' and 'visits' are used to measure the total number of visits that visited your website. Use your campaign' goals and revenues to make sure that real traf?c will not be ?ltered. Alternatively, you can add a new ?lter to your custom report to exclude internal traf?c, bot and spiders, and referrer spam that include your domain credentials. However, it is advisable to execute your tasks carefully when excluding rogue sites and referrer spam from your Google Analytics. The two Google related hostnames displayed on your segment should not be treated as rogue sites as this can lead to loss of valuable information. The segment also comprises of a web-cache that indicates when visitors clicks the 'cache' option and a translate hostname that indicates that some of your potential visitors used a Google translate service. Check on your segment to see whether you will see some hostnames you are not familiar with. If you indicate them, drill them down to the visitors landing page. Paste the hostname URL to your visitors landing page to have a look at the sites using your real traf?c. After being convinced the domain is rogue, ?lter them out using the following procedures. Filtering rogue sites using reactive exclusion method After identifying the list of hostnames to be blocked, add new exclusion ?lters. When using this method of excluding rogue domains, it is advisable to keep into account that new ?lters exclude new data. Create another ?lter to be remained un?ltered during your execution. This way, you will recover your data even if you mess up with your exclusion practice. The proactive exclusion method In this method of excluding rogue sites from your Google Analytics, domains are ?ltered depending on whether they match with your created hostnames. If the hostname of the ?ltered data does not match with the domains, the data can not be retrieved from your report. Google Analytics has come to the rescue of both B2C and B2B businesses operating on the online platforms. A ?rm can now ?lter and exclude rogue sites, referrer spam, and malware from their website to achieve clean and accurate reports. Be careful when excluding rogue sites from your Google Analytics to avoid ?ltering valuable information. https://rankexperience.com/articles/article1384.html 2/2