Bot Exclusions in Google Analytics - semalt darodar

[SEO Lady]

So, I've gone into GA and in Admin > View Settings I have checked the Bot Filtering button

Bot Filtering
Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders

So, I'm implementing filters to exclude referral traffic too, from the usual suspects

I've read online that with URLs like
forum.topic63106902.darodar . com
www 3.free-social-buttons . com

Rather than creating the filter at domain level 'darodar . com' and 'free-social-buttons . com' respectively, there is a bit of code to use:
(.*)\free-social-buttons\.com
(.*)\darodar\.com

Can any of you developers confirm this?

 

[SEO Lady]

I'm bumping this question to see if anyone can respond, thank you
- Nina

 

[PIers Ede]

No, you just go to referral exclusions and add the domain. No code necessary!

 

[SEO Lady]

I'm specifically referring to:
www. free-social-buttons .com
www2.free-social-buttons .com
www3.free-social-buttons .com
www4.free-social-buttons .com
www5.free-social-buttons .com
www6.free-social-buttons .com
www7.free-social-buttons .com

So, instead the code I found online was this for everything:
(.*)\free-social-buttons\.com

 

[PIers Ede]

I've never heard of this. Would be interested to know myself if there's a catch all you can use....

 

[ZeroDouble]

I don't use GA so I can't help with that, but would it not be better to just block them in .htaccess instead?

 

[Ian J]

I don't use GA so I can't help with that, but would it not be better to just block them in .htaccess instead?

No as they aren't actually visiting the website so won't be blocked. They are spoofing Google Analytics without actually visiting the site. It's made such a mess of my statistics that I don't bother with GA any more

 

[ZeroDouble]

No as they aren't actually visiting the website so won't be blocked. They are spoofing Google Analytics without actually visiting the site. It's made such a mess of my statistics that I don't bother with GA any more

I meant to block the actual bots themselves, the ones that are spoofing the referrer info on GA.

 

[astrolabium]

Tired of creating filters on GA and blocking on .htaccess.

 

[Lenka Pollak]

I agree with astrolabium, using .htaccess is probably the best technique.