Unusual traffic on the website; seems Spam

[TheRedPenOfDoom]

I have noticed some unusual traffic on my website, it is showing -

Landing Page - www.mywebsite.com/www1.some-other-website.tld
Sessions - 120
% New Session - 100.00%
New Users - 120
Bounce Rate - 2.50%
Pages/Session - 2.90

The problem is I do not have any such page on my website. I have noticed more such entries in my Analytics report.

In the past, I noticed some spam looking site in my referral section (within analytics) and blocked them through htaccess using the following code -

# Block Referrer Spam
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*someotherwebsite\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*someotherwebsite\.ru/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*someotherwebsite\.org/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*anotherwebsite2\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*anotherwebsite3\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*anotherwebsite4\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]

Can anyone explain this traffic and how this can be fixed?

[edited by: aakk9999 at 12:33 pm (utc) on Sep 22, 2016]
[edit reason] Exemplified [/edit]

[keyplyr]

What do you see when you look at that other site? Is any of your content there? Is your site being framed by the other site?

Some companies report stats and info about web sites and often use the respective site in their URL as a subdirectory. These are usually benign.

[not2easy]

If it is referrer spam, there are more efficient ways to block it. If it is framed or scraped content it depends on how your content is being used at the other site(s) whether you prevent access or not. Some are harmless others are not. As keyplyr says, see what they're doing, then decide what to do.

[whitespace]

The problem is I do not have any such page on my website.

How is your site responding to such requests? Make sure your site isn't responding with a 200 OK, or 3xx redirect to the homepage or something. It should be a 404.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]

Minor tidy... There's no need for a capturing group if you aren't using a backreference in the substitution (unnecessary extra work for the regex engine). And if you are matching everything you don't need the anchors. Also, the "F" flag implies the "L" flag, so the "L" flag is unnecessary here. So, the above is functionally the same as:

RewriteRule ^ - [F]

(Hhmmm, that "hyphen" in the substitution I copied from your code, wasn't a hyphen! It's an EN DASH!? mod_rewrite ignores the substitution anyway when the F flag is used, but that really should be a hyphen, not a dash.)

[TheRedPenOfDoom]

keyplyr: What do you see when you look at that other site?

** When I open that site it redirects to an another URL (GA tagged) which has only one page with a share button code.

keyplyr: Is any of your content there? Is your site being framed by the other site?

** No it does not have any contetn/code/design of my website.

whitespace: How is your site responding to such requests?

** My site is responding 404.
** Thanks for the cleaned up code.

not2easy: If it is referrer spam, there are more efficient ways to block it.

** I think you are right and it is a referrer spam. I searched on the internet and used that htaccess code to block it. But the things is that I have to check each time in the report and add a code for each individual website.

-----

1. What are the other possible way to block it and why my website is being tragetted for such spam activities?
2. Is there any security flaws on the server which I can get fixed in some way to stop this?

[not2easy]

1. What are the other possible way to block it and why my website is being tragetted for such spam activities?
2. Is there any security flaws on the server which I can get fixed in some way to stop this?

Just about everyone gets referrer spam, you can refuse entry and over time they may update the bot to bypass your site. You can't prevent it so you can either ignore it or block it. It is just junk, not a security issue unless you can see your content framed on their site(s).

A more efficient way to block it - rather than block each individual example is to block referrers that "contain" the unwanted referrer. Just be sure not to use a character string that could block your actual visitors (like "bin" or "oogle"). Something like:

#referrer spam
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (for-your-|gratis|semalt|someotherwebsite)
RewriteRule .* - [F]

where you separate the blocked referrers within parentheses ( ) using | so that in this example you are blocking four different spammers: "buttons-for-your-website", any of the "gratis" variety, "semalt" and any with "someotherwebsite".

[lucy24]

I have noticed some unusual traffic on my website, it is showing -

Landing Page - www.mywebsite.com/www1.some-other-website.tld
Sessions - 120
% New Session - 100.00%
New Users - 120
Bounce Rate - 2.50%
Pages/Session - 2.90

I realize this is late, but... have you noticed actual traffic, or is this entire discussion based strictly on analytics reports? If you are using a third-party analytics program such as YouKnowWho, it is very possible that the reported visit is entirely fabricated and they never went near your site at all.