My client's website is getting lots of visits and backlinks from and unknown URL that looks shady. When I try to visit the page it opens another website with a different URL.
What should I do about this?
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I think that this site produces fake visits precisely for you to go see what is it and be redirected to advertising... just ignore it. – Atarax Mar 27 '18 at 11:59
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Is this Google Analytics question related? https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/75909/how-to-fight-off-google-analytics-referrer-spammers – chrki Mar 27 '18 at 13:10
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@chrki Sort of. I am getting this info from Google webmaster though – Cody Mar 27 '18 at 13:22
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You should also consider to filter your Google Analytics statistics since the visits from this server are bogus and are tampering with your statistics!
Here is a tutorial how to create a filter for your Google Analytics account
Florian
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If this website is indeed linking to your domain, and it's not looking legit, it can harm your reputation with Google, since Google doesn't know if you purchased this link or not.
There's not much we can do about sites that link to us, since the internet is built on this premise. However, we can still take action against spam sites. The first step would normally be to contact the webmaster and request that the links to your website be removed. In this case, it looks like the site is just spam, and you don't wanna draw more attention to yourself.
You should disavow the backlinks in Google Search Console. More here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
Then, feel free to report the site as spam:
Henry Visotski
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Google recommends disavowing links only if they appear to be causing problem. Google says it can usually spot spam on its own and most sites don't need to use the disavow tool. Using the tool can hurt SEO rather than help in many cases. – Stephen Ostermiller Mar 27 '18 at 15:11
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@StephenOstermiller I agree that the tool should not be abused. If this site bothers him though, I don't see any harm in disavowing the occasional spam site. I use this feature judiciously, and haven't seen any harm personally, though no boost either. – Henry Visotski Mar 27 '18 at 15:21
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It's a common marketing ploy these days, where sites send you fake traffic so that you will visit their URL when you see it in analytics acquisition referral. That is likely what this is.
You can disavow the links from this website here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Once the links have been disavowed, you can just ignore the traffic and not worry about it. If it really comes to it, you can either block that website's traffic by banning their IPs in htaccess as discovered by your logs, or you can filter your Analytics traffic to not include traffic referred by that site. Though these two methods really aren't necessary and are only a last resort if needed.
Michael d
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