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For you savages still using Google Analytics, Google finally removed referral spam from the logs:
IMO, the real solution would be to just delete everything...
[..] as of this weekend, many people were reporting that Google Analytics referral spam is no longer showing up in reporting.
The change does not appear to be retroactive, as I do see referral spam still in Google Analytics in January. But as of February, it seems that Google has finally solved the Google Analytics spam problem, as it appears no referral spam shows up – at least none of the commonly known ones.
It does still seem to show referral spam in the real time view. So it appears Google Analytics is somehow applying a filter after the fact to remove those referral spam URLs before it hits the acquisition reporting.
[..]
Referral spam gains traffic by hoping that site owners will click through on those referral sites in order to see what it was that brought visitors to the site. While no links – or real traffic – came from these sites, they could still see traffic from webmasters who checked. And Google Analytics wasn’t previously able to tell that it was referral spam and not a real person.
Sauce: http://www.thesempost.com/google-analytics-referral-spam-removed/
The change does not appear to be retroactive, as I do see referral spam still in Google Analytics in January. But as of February, it seems that Google has finally solved the Google Analytics spam problem, as it appears no referral spam shows up – at least none of the commonly known ones.
It does still seem to show referral spam in the real time view. So it appears Google Analytics is somehow applying a filter after the fact to remove those referral spam URLs before it hits the acquisition reporting.
[..]
Referral spam gains traffic by hoping that site owners will click through on those referral sites in order to see what it was that brought visitors to the site. While no links – or real traffic – came from these sites, they could still see traffic from webmasters who checked. And Google Analytics wasn’t previously able to tell that it was referral spam and not a real person.
Sauce: http://www.thesempost.com/google-analytics-referral-spam-removed/
IMO, the real solution would be to just delete everything...