Why are bots or servers crawling non- (NEVER) existent URLs and how can I stop this?

Question

Through Google Analytics I started noticing hits in the dozens via a source page named as "free-seo-help.org" that redirects to http://seo2.agri-co-jsy.com/?site=http://

It does not go to my actual home page or any existing page, but to a url with a gibberish extension that I have never used for any web page, i.e., mydomain and then/h/[#######].html (I rechecked to verify this.)

Other source pages for other sites I use to convey information that has received media coverage angering dishonest individuals and government employees include perform-likeity-alibaba.info, although this one also is going to existing pages.
If I click on the nonexistent links interface reads: "Not Found The requested URL /h/[#######].html was not found on this server." There is no 404 or other error number,etc., just that text.

I am concerned that the purpose is to make my sites seem as though they have bogus links and to drive down the ranking. Thoughts?

It seems my problem is the same as the one mentioned here: Why am I receiving request with h/randomNumber.html - but I'm new cannot comment.

Answer 1

If you are simply trying to remove them from being seen in Google Analytics, Here is an Article that explains how to filter them out. However, This Article has information on why you shouldn't just stop there, and while there is some overlap, there are a lot of good resources and instructions on how to handle it.

If you want to forbid them from crawling your site, it will take a little digging on your part, but you can block them through your .htaccess file, so they only get 403 Forbidden responses. You'll have to determine the User Agent, but once you do, you can open your .htaccess file, and enter something like the following:

<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
    SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^360Spider.*" bad_bot

   <Limit GET POST PUT>
      Order Allow,Deny
      Allow from all
      Deny from env=bad_bot
    </Limit>
</IfModule>

This is an example that I am currently using, but you can replace 360Spider with the User-Agent that you find. Also, you can repeat that line as many times as you want to block multiple agents.

If this isn't working for you or you are unable to determine the User Agent, then you can block them by using the referrer instead, which can be found in your Google Analytics. There is an example in the second link above, but for you, it would look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*free-seo-help\.org/ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]
</IfModule>