What is Referral or Referrer Spam?

What is Referral or Referrer Spam?

Referral spam, also known as referrer spam, ghost spam or ghost referrals is created by spam bots visiting websites and artificially triggering page views for fake traffic.
By exploiting vulnerabilities in Google Analytics tracking code hundreds, or thousands of visitors appear in Google Analytics showing a huge increase in visitors. The intention could be to encourage the site owner to visit the the spammer's site or to publish the referral link somewhere, perhaps on their own site, or a forum discussing it and creating a back link to the spammer.
We had an incident with a customer yesterday with a fully up to date Joomla 5 website on a Scala Hosting VPS, Google Analytics 4 was reporting 500 to 1,500 visitors in real time from Warsaw, in Poland. This had been going on for a week or more prior to the customer submitting a ticket on our helpdesk. 

Upon investigation the visitor stats in Google Analytics 4 did not match the visitor stats in the Scala Hosting Spanel stats and these were fake visits. In the Google Analytics filtering documentation there are options for bot filtering for Universal Analytics but for GA4 it appears to be automatic. 

So the only options for continuing using Google Analytics are to ignore this for now and hope that google resolves it or to employ a specialist which there is no budget for.

A possible quick solution was to use our Realvision Analytics which is Privacy Respecting Website Analytics based on Matomo. We set up the tracking and within half an hour can view the real traffic without all the noise from the fake traffic hiding it, this looks like a good solution and in Google Analytics the fake traffic is still present.

What Joomla Support Services do you provide?

Supporting, building, hosting, maintaining and optimising and all kinds of Joomla websites since 2005 we have gained vast experience. This combined with our Joomla Website Support System enables us to work very efficiently with any Joomla related project.

We have worked on several hundred Joomla websites ranging from sites with a few pages to sites with several hundred thousand pages including multi language sites. Taking on all kinds of Joomla related projects, including;

  • Adding additional functionality.
  • Adding content delivery networks.
  • Adding E-Commerce along with shopping carts.
  • Adding multiple anti-spam solutions.
  • Adding payment gateways.
  • Adding user management and subscription memberships.
  • Building new Joomla websites.
  • Customising Joomla extensions.
  • Customising Joomla templates.
  • Developing all kinds of forms including API integrations and auto field population using GeoIP services.
  • Developing custom Joomla extensions.
  • Developing custom Joomla templates.
  • Implementing GDPR compliance.
  • Implementing HTTP security headers.
  • Joomla Extension Installation and configuration.
  • Joomla Installation and configuration on your hosting.
  • Joomla search engine marketing,
  • Joomla search engine optimisation.
  • Joomla site backup restoration on your hosting.
  • Joomla version updates
  • Joomla website speed optimisation.
  • Making Joomla websites responsive and mobile friendly.
  • Malware removal including file and database cleanup.
  • Migrating existing websites to Joomla including WordPress and none CMS websites.
  • Migrating Joomla websites from one host to another.
  • Producing AMP versions of Joomla websites.
  • Resolving security-related issues.
  • SSL certificate installation.
along with support and training, and anything required to keep Joomla Websites fast, functional, secure, and stable

To order hourly Joomla Specialist Support and Maintenance service, press the add to cart button, select a minimum of one hour and submit a ticket on our helpdesk.
Once you become a customer you get access to a Highly Experienced Joomla Developer and;
  • Access to our secure private support helpdesk site where access credentials are kept along with tasks and changes which are documented in detail.
  • Use of our ticketing system where bugs can be reported, questions asked, and additional features can be requested.

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We offer a wide range of services at Joomla Fixers, including remote on-demand and scheduled Joomla Website Support, Website Design, Website Development, Website Maintenance, Website Marketing, and Website Hosting. Our services cater to both end users and web design studios worldwide.

With over 15 years of experience in overseeing, fixing, constructing, managing, and enhancing Joomla websites since 2005, we are able to operate highly effectively thanks to our Joomla Website Support System.

Joomla Fixers-Joomla Website Support and Maintenance Specialists
Realvision Internet Limited
124 City Road
London, EC1V 2NX
United Kingdom


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