25.03.2014
I use Google analytics to track my blog's traffic. Not too long ago I noticed that a lot of the referral visits come from a website called semalt.com. If you visit this Internet address you can't quite understand what is this website about, because it requires paid registration.
After I spent some time goggling I figured out that the jump in the traffic is caused by small programs - crawlers that visit your blog in order to collect data about it. Usually Google filters such visits and I am sure that they will fix the issue soon. At the moment though it is quite annoying because you can't see the real traffic on your website. I am not that obsessed with my Google analytics results, but my curiosity always takes over and I end up looking forward to the moment I can check my Google analytics report.
I think a lot of people have noticed the issue because there are a lot of information about it on the web. I solved the problem as I set a custom filter in my Google analytics account that excludes the referral traffic that comes from semalt.com. For the Field Field I chose "Campaign Referral Path" and in the Filter pattern field I wrote "/crawler.php". I found the information on this site link, where there are detailed information and screenshots. Since I did that I haven't seen any visits from semalt.com in my Google analytics results.
I know that this is not a typical post for me to write, but a lot of bloggers read my site so I thought that the information may be helpful to some of you.
