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How to remove social-buttons.com / simple-share-buttons.com this type of lots of Referral Spam link they increase 100% bounce rate Google Analytic Screenshot

How to remove this type of referral spam link in via .htaccess or Google Analytic

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They use a vulnerability in Google Analytics to make fake visits so the only way to stop them for now, and until Google fix it, is to make a filter in GA since that is the source of the problem.

Blocking them in the .htaccess file is pointless since this kind of Spam never visits your site.

Check this answers for more information about this spam https://stackoverflow.com/a/29312117/3197362

And this for Referrer Spam in General and some methods you can use to filter them and stop future occurrences https://stackoverflow.com/a/28354319/3197362

As for the previous/historical data, you can use segments in Google analytics. Create a REGEX with the Spam names something like this:

social-buttons\.com|simple-share-buttons\.com

You can add as many as you want, but the REGEX has a 255 character limit. You can add multiple conditions if this happens

  • Go to the Reporting section in your Google Analytics.

  • In the lateral bar, expand Acquisitions > All Traffic and Select Referrals.

  • In the main board Click on +Add Segment.

  • Click on New Segment.

  • Select Conditions Below Advanced.

  • Set filter as Exclude. Change Ad Content for Medium and contains for exactly matches and type and select referral in the text box.

  • Click on AND

  • Change Ad Content for Source and contains for matches regex and paste the Spam Regex.
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    To defeat this specific type of referrer spam, instead of excluding traffic from a bunch different sources, I have an include filter that only allows traffic with Hostname matching my domain. My regex is something like ^((www|blog)\.)?mydomain\.com/?. If you want to match any subdomain, just use ^((.*)\.)?mydomain\.com/?.
    – Alex P. Miller
    Mar 30, 2015 at 15:52
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    Yes, that's also a good approach but you should add other like '|translate\.googleusercontent.com' and '|paypal\.com' (if you use it). It's fine for small/ medium sites but for large with a lot of subdomains can be tricky and can exclude some valid traffic. Here is something similar but with the filters stackoverflow.com/a/28354319/3197362
    – Chavo
    Mar 30, 2015 at 16:54
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You can also just add a filter so that all traffic from these annoying sites are filtered out of your analytics and do not create fake results.

  1. In Google Analytics go to Admin
  2. Under VIEW select Filters
  3. Add New Filter
  4. Give the filter a name
  5. Select Filter Type: Exclude
  6. Select source destination: traffic to the host name
  7. Select expression: that are equal to
  8. Hostname: social-buttons.com
  9. Verify and save.

This should filter out all their visits.

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  • This doesn't seem to work for spam referrals from free-share-buttons.com. The exclude does work for other referrals, though.
    – aLearner
    Apr 24, 2015 at 7:29
  • Try this: After step 4, select Custom. Check "Exclude". Select "Referral" from "Filter Field" drop down. Add in the free-share-buttons.com in "Filter Pattern". Click Save.
    – walbuc
    May 18, 2015 at 13:35

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