How to remove semalt.com from Google Analytics referral data

Do you referral stats in google Analytics looks like this?

semalt

Semalt is a bot that will crawl your site for information about the page content and many other aspects of the website.

If you haven’t signed up for the service like me then the bot is gathering information for competitive analysis.

For me I have no problem with the bot or the business that semalt offer but its the fact is messes with my stats.

As the bot will not follow the rules of robots.txt according to all the WOT reports here then your can try requesting removal from them directly via this link.

So you are using Google Analytics and want to remove Semalt.com from your stats?

  • First log into your google Analytics account and click on the website property in question.
  • Next click on the admin link show here:

semaltremoval

  • Now you should see 3 columns. Columns Account, Property and View.
  • In the middle column labelled Property click Tracking info as below:

semaltremovaltracking

  • The tracking info should now show in a drop down.
  • Now click on referral exclusion list as below:

referral-exclusion

Simply then add the domain to the exclusion list. You can do this with any domain you’d like.

Important notes

This will only working with ga.js or an analytics.js and not with doubleclick.

Other options for removal of semalt referrals

If you don’t want the bot slowing down your site and also messing with your stats then .htaccess is your best option.

.htaccess code:

# block semalt.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semalt\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F]

What about Google Analytics views?

You can follow the steps in the domain exclusion but select the 3rd column  “Views” then select “Filters” then click “New Filter” then select “custom filter”  next pick “exclude” and add the  “semalt”

A full guide to view filters which is well worth reading can be found here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033162?hl=en-GB

If you need any help setting up View filters and any other type of Google Analytics setup then let us know.