5 ms·

they get their links in your google analytics reports... you'll likely check to see what the site is - causing you to visit the spammers site...

• raziel2p 12y ago
  The number of people in posession of a Google Analytics dashboard is way too low for spammers to generate significant click counts.
• chii 12y ago
  wow, that's quite a long winded way to get a site admin to visit a spam site - and plus it's very likely to be ad-blocked (savvy admins).
  • wlkr 12y ago
    Based on article dates it would seem this spam hasn't been around all that long, certainly I hadn't seen it before December. I imagine people would click the link because it's the source of an unexpected spike in perceived traffic. Certainly spammers are testing the waters with this, I suppose we'll soon know how successful it is from the number of copycats and Googles eventual response.
    • mansr 12y ago
      Referer spam has been around almost as long as web analytics. What's new is that they found a way to infiltrate Google Analytics, which previously avoided them somehow. I'm surprised Google hasn't come up with a countermeasure yet.
    • SyneRyder 12y ago
      The SEMalt spam has been around since at least June 2014, I got incensed enough to block them from my server and write up how to block them on Apache servers: http://kohanikin.com/2014/filtering-semalt-referrer-spam.html http://kohanikin.com/2014/filtering-semalt-referrer-spam.htm... This post seems to describe a new technique where spammers never even visit your site in the first place, spamming the Google Analytics servers directly.