To sum this up, the two domains use a tactic known as referral spam. Max Bell, the leading expert at Semalt, explains that the idea behind referral spam is that sites can generate many links to a domain from a particular site they want to promote. When search engines crawl through records, they find these references and include them in final reports. The downside to this is that none of the traffic is valid and it can alter the way one makes decisions for the website.

Since all the links point to a particular site, the owner may be curious as to why the site is sending so much traffic. Once they click on the URL in GA reports, they are redirected to the referring website, which is then translated as a new visit. For the spam site, the visits it receives from unsuspecting owners are organic.

Fortunately, there is no real threat on the website. As stated above, it invalidates all data collected about traffic to the site as it interferes with the number. The result is a biased report that does not show the real picture of what is happening on the site. Bounce rates are typically 100% with zero time on site.

It would be imperative to lock the website buttons and roll over to get a more realistic picture of the site’s performance. Most of the troubleshooting articles describe the use of the relatively new “Bot Filtering” feature in Google Analytics. In the View settings, Google added a simple checkbox that the user can choose to check or leave unchecked. From experience with this option, the conclusion of this article assumes that the bot filtering option does not filter the two spammers: darodar.com and buttons-for-website.com.

A better method to prevent website buttons and darodar from generating junk traffic is to use a custom filter. Use the following procedure:

1. Open Google Analytics and click on the Administrator tab.

2. The View option that appears in the right column should present a submenu where there is a message to “Create new view.” Experts advise on creating a custom filter in view so that at the end of the process, there is an unfiltered view that has all the raw data for comparison.

3. Give the filter a name.

4. On the Filters tab, select the + New filter option.

5. Use a distinguished name for the new filter.

6. The filter type must be Custom.

7. Use Reference in the Filter field under Exclude and enter the name of the first reference (website-buttons).

8. Save.

9. Repeat from step 5 for darodar.com.