Tips From Semalt: Using .htacess File On Google Analytics

For the past few months, Google analytics referral spam has been the topic of discussion in the digital marketing industry. Blocking and removing both crawler and ghost spam from your GA report cannot be ignored by no means. Obtaining, achieving and analyzing clean and accurate reports get your WordPress website on track and ranking high in the algorithms.

As a webmaster, the importance of conducting research and understanding how referral spam propagates into websites is of uttermost importance. As covered in blocking Google Analytics referral spam part 1, cleaning up of both ghost referral spam and crawler referral spam should be executed differently. According to marketing specialists, ghost referral spam skews your GA data through the use of external servers. On the other hand, crawler spam directly accesses your website. To delete spam from analytics, consider executing the following tricks offered by Jack Miller, the Semalt Senior Customer Success Manager.

Removal of GA referral spam using .htacess special considerations

Removing GA referral spam using .htaccess special considerations is a do-it-yourself task that you can execute directly using your local machine. This method gives webmasters an opportunity to use WP htaccess editor and WP htaccess control.

WordPress makes the removal of both crawler and ghost spam more accessible through the use of plugins. However, consider noting that you don't have to log into your WordPress website directly to execute the .htacess file and to delete spam from analytics when using plugins. If you note you don't have a .htacess file on your WordPress, navigate to your website's 'Settings' and select on 'Permalinks.' Tap on 'Save Changes' icon to execute a directory and delete spam from analytics successfully.

Using .htacess method to remove spam from analytics

Using the .htaccess file to remove and delete spam from your Google Analytics is very simple and easy. This technique works best to block crawler spam from accessing your website. To access .htaccess configuration file on your site, navigate the root domain of your website's server. Here is a procedural guide that will help you block referral spam from your analytics report using the .htacess configuration file.

• A) Navigate your website's server root domain to find .htaccess file. Save the file to a directory and generate another copy to create a backup solution.
• B) Update your file to the latest sources where referral spam originates from. Begin referral spam exclusions process and add 'RewriteCond' on your original command prompt.
• C) After being satisfied that the exclusion was executed successfully, copy the revised version and overwrite it on your website server. In some cases, your website may fail to load. No need to worry. Re-upload your original copy to restore the previous versions.

Why you should not modify your .htacess file

As a webmaster, you may be tempted to change your WordPress .htacess file to meet your needs and specifications in real time. However, you can use the configuration file to block a range of IP addresses from accessing your site. This is another trick used by webmasters to delete spam from analytics easily. After blocking a range or single IP addresses, visitors trying to access your website using the addresses always encounters errors.

Managing a website affected by crawler and ghost spam can be a tiresome task. However, you don't have to panic if you encounter referrer spam on your Google Analytics reports. Execute the above-discussed methods to delete spam from analytics efficiently.