How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google Analytics

Re:How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google An... by t3ra on Monday December 26, 2016 @04:59PM (#13260003)

Isn't cloudflare blocking this spam? Because I was managing a WordPress site for a client behind cloudflare and they were still able to spam usi g this technique

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google An... by hbcondo714 on Monday December 26, 2016 @05:39PM (#13260151)

No, the referal spam never hits the website. It instead goes straight to GA.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google An... by soared on Monday December 26, 2016 @07:27PM (#13260522)

hbcondo714 is correct, nothing every actually touches your website. Its send with the measurement protocol, which allows you to POST data straight to GA.

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google An... by klenwell on Monday December 26, 2016 @10:14PM (#13261055)

This is the detail that the article seemed to miss. Or did I miss it?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Referral Spam Like lifehacker.com Gets into Google An... by partiallypro on Monday December 26, 2016 @07:59PM (#13260633)

Cloudflare does block some spammers, and marks them as "bad browser." But it doesn't catch all types of spam attacks.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170086-W...

[ Parent | on HN ]