Referrer spam traffic?

[virtualreality]

Hello,
I noticed a large number of referrer traffic coming from

widget-proxy.net
widget-proxies.net
widget-proxies.com
widget-proxy.com
widget-proxies.org
widget-proxy.org

Does anyone else have seen this in their stats and is it spam?

[edited by: goodroi at 11:05 am (utc) on Apr 5, 2016]
[edit reason] Please no specific urls [/edit]

[goodroi]

I always have referrer spam, it usually turns out to be websites that are trying to advertise their services to webmasters. They know enough webmasters will be curious and click through to see which site is referring traffic to them.

A small minority of referrer spam does look like someone trying to intentionally pollute my usage statisitics, possibly for a sabotage attempt. That is rare and fortunately has not been a significant problem for me.

[tangor]

If it worries you, set up exclusions in your .htaccess (if on Apache). Not that it will change much. :(

[Andy Langton]

If it worries you, set up exclusions in your .htaccess (if on Apache).

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for third-party analytics (like Google Analytics). The spammers just use the tracking code on local pages. The solution in those cases is to block unknown hostnames from sending data via the analytics systems themselves.

[lucy24]

this doesn't work for third-party analytics

And that's why you should never rely solely on analytics-- especially packages that live on someone else's server so they're not subject to your own access controls. Cross-check against your site logs, and see whether they even visited your site in person.

[tangor]

Cross-check against your site logs, and see whether they even visited your site in person.

Winkers :)

[AnujSinghal]

I was also suffering with referrer spam and i use google analytic to remove them.

[virtualreality]

Thank you all for your helpful feedback!