Analytics Spam Blocker

Description

For any website or business owner, having Matomo Analytics, Google Analytics and similar services are a vital tool to track your website performance. Unfortunately there are spam bots from many shady organizations that bounce off your website and give you false records in your analytics – This is called ‘referral spam’ or more commonly referrer spam. Analytics Spam Blocker prevents this kind of spam from ever reaching your website by blocking them at the server level leaving your analytics untouched. Easily add new domains that you find and receive weekly updates in the background with new domains as well. Stop those sites from affecting anyones website analytics today!

Screenshots

Installation

1. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your dashboard.
2. Search for ‘Arnan’ in the plugin database and click install on the ‘Analytics Spam Blocker’ plugin.
3. Once installed activate the plugin and you’re ready to go.
4. Navigate to Tools > Analytics Spam Blocker in your dashboard to make reports.

FAQ

How does this work?

Analytics Spam Blocker adds a list of domains to be blocked to your .htaccess file. This list is regularly updated next to what you add yourself so you’ll be able to filter out the majority of referrer spam very quickly.

How does the list get updated?

Matomo Analytics publishes a list of domains to be blocked. Analytics Spam Blocker downloads this list weekly and adds it to your blocklist.

Who manages the blocklist updates?

In a way, you do. But the majority of domains are community managed and published by Matomo Analytics through Github.

I need help with this plugin

Check out the Support Forum.

This is cool, do you have more plugins?

Yep, check out my website AJdG Solutions.

Reviews

Resolved a Longstanding Spam Issue

primacreatrix May 22, 2024 2 replies

Wonderful plugin! 259 spam domains were automatically found and blocked.

UPDATE: Deleted Analytics Spam Blocker

donhz May 4, 2022

Wait for 7 days then check your Referrers for that time people. Spam will be gone for that 7 days. This is to say the old bad Referrers don’t go away. But new ones are blocked as they should be. EDIT*** Lowered my rating. Regardless of how good or bad the plug-in may be, these developers insist on putting big beg notices on the Admin page. This is a rookie marketing error on their part. I have deleted the plug-in to get rid of their trash. Analytics Spam Blocker continued to beg for a review (even though I reviewed it before), and this is it. I think your Admin page noitces doom you to failure.

Works well

June 1, 2020

This works much better than trying to maintain and update my own filter list in Google Analytics.

Good but can be improved

mborin November 30, 2018 2 replies

There needs to be a way for users to add domains to the list of blocked domains.

Great plugin

DawneR July 28, 2018

This is a great plugin that has really helped me ensure that my GA stats are real. I’ve recently started blogging, and I was really excited to see my pageviews go way up in one day, until I realized it was almost all fake. ?? As soon as I installed Analytics Spam Blocker, my stats went back to normal. The plugin was easy to install and I had no issues.

Needs improvements

July 27, 2017

Works fairly well, but it needs some improvements. Modern Referral spam bots often use ‘look alike characters’ in domain names, characters from non-western alphabets resembling western characters. The function to report a spam domain however tells that the ‘domain name is not valid’. Like for example ?.com…

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

4.0 – June 21, 2024

• [new] Referral spam list from Matomo
• [new] Weekly update referrel spam list from Matomo
• [new] Check if domain already is blocked
• [change] Code cleanup
• [removed] Spamblocker API reporting

3.2 – 21 April, 2024

• Added 10 more domains to the default blocklist based on user reports
• Fixed Dashboard typos
• Updated API requests

3.1.2 – 17 April, 2023

• Added 3 more domains to the default blocklist based on user reports

3.1.1 – 5 February, 2023

• Typos in the dashboard
• Updated translation file

3.1 – 31 January, 2023

• Updated dashboard sections
• Updated support links
• Removed help tabs
• Removed unused icons

3.0.3 – 2 January, 2023

• Updated dashboard sections
• Updated support links
• Updated stats widget

3.0.2 – 21 December, 2022

• Fixed compatibility info
• Fixed support links

3.0.1 – 7 October, 2022

• Added 5 new domains to blocklist following user reports
• Updated support links

3.0 – 19 March, 2022

• All new plugin, familiar dashboard
• Local blocklists for immediate results
• Report new domains easier than ever
• Translation support
• Now uses Api3

2.9.6 – 25 January, 2021

• Happy New Year
• Added News&Update links

2.9.5 – 27 December, 2020

• Tested to work with WordPress 5.6
• [change] Dashboard tweaks
• [tweak] Better descriptions throughout the plugin

2.9.4 – 3 August, 2020

• Tested to work with WordPress 5.5
• [change] Dashboard tweaks
• [fix] Action link settings no longer opening in new tab

2.9.3 – 10 May, 2020

• [fix] Dashboard stats
• [fix] More reliable registration for new users
• [change] Dashboard tweaks

2.9.2 – 9 September, 2019

• [fix] Dashboard widgets showing properly
• [i18n] Updated translations

2.9.1 – 30 August, 2019

• [i18n] Updated translations

2.9 – 21 August, 2019

• [change] Updated dashboard
• [change] WordPress 5.2.2 compatibility
• [i18n] Updated translation implementation

2.8.1 – 16 June, 2019

• [change] Updated dashboard
• [fix] Wrong url in plugin links

2.8 – 4 May, 2019

• [fix] Server communication not working for some people
• [fix] Registration process more reliable
• [change] Updated dashboard

2.7.1 – 12 April, 2019

• [fix] Communication error with the server for some people

2.7 – 30 March, 2019

• [change] Updated dashboard
• [change] Various tweaks and improvements

2.6 – 11 December, 2018

• [change] WordPress 5.0 update
• [change] Insights in API stats
• [change] Updated dashboard
• [change] Uses APIv2

2.5 – 8 July, 2018

• [change] Compatibility update
• [change] Updated dashboard
• [change] More clear error displays if things go wrong

2.4.2 – 17 May, 2018

• [change] Compatibility update
• [change] Updated dashboard

= 2.4.1 – 12 December, 2017=
* [change] Re-arranged the dashboard
* [change] Improved compatibility with WordPress
* [change] Api updates

2.4 – 10 June, 2017

• [fix] Better field sanitizing to better deal with copy&paste behavior
• [fix] Better domain filtering
• [fix] Better email handling
• [fix] No more endless linebreaks in the .htaccess file
• [change] Dashboard tweaks

2.3 – 14 May, 2017

• [fix] Dashboard tweaks

2.2 – 19 April, 2017

• [fix] Dashboard tweaks

2.1.1 – 4 April, 2017

• [fix] Registration reminder shows up correctly

2.1 – 7 March, 2017

• [new] Review reminder
• [new] Registration reminder

2.0 – 3 March, 2017

• [new] Easily report referral spam domains
• [new] Dashboard page in Tools menu
• [new] Daily blocklist updates
• [change] Restructured the whole plugin

1.8.1 – 5 February, 2017

• Development taken over by Arnan de Gans