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The SEMalt (or semalt) botnet may be attacking your website eating bandwidth and producing false visits with a 100% bounce rate.
According to articles posted on the web, it appears the goals are to distort your bounce rate, sell useless SEO services, and maybe, install malware. Some also warn against visiting the website. We suspect the plethora of emails for SEO services, slipping through the spam filters, may be partly related to this.
The evidence is found in the Acquisitions - Referral Report in Google Analytics. Search for "semalt" in the reports advanced search to see all the variations of its domains and sub-domains that have been used to attack your site. Select country as a Second Dimension, found under Users, to see the global nature of this; truly, this is a devious botnet.
We have been hit a number of times, since January 2014, from computers located in almost 40 countries usually spread among several cities. This means they have infected a wide range of computers. Each attacks varies in the number hits. It eats into the bandwidth.
Most importantly, each one of these phony visits counts as a new visitor. This attack distorts the bounce rate and the visitor count by reporting both higher than the true numbers. Accurate analytics information is the foundation of an effective ecommerce marketing strategy.
Potentially, it could lead to Google demoting your website, or at least some of your pages, in the search results because the appear to be of low quality. Hopefully, Google is wise to this.
You can set up a filter, in Google Analytics, to prevent "semalt" visits from appearing in the Google Analytics reports. However, the filter will only prevent future visits from showing. According to postings on the web by others dealing with this, the most effective solution requires blocking in your website's .htaccess file.
It would be helpful if a 3dCart could comment, and even better, implement a solution.
According to articles posted on the web, it appears the goals are to distort your bounce rate, sell useless SEO services, and maybe, install malware. Some also warn against visiting the website. We suspect the plethora of emails for SEO services, slipping through the spam filters, may be partly related to this.
The evidence is found in the Acquisitions - Referral Report in Google Analytics. Search for "semalt" in the reports advanced search to see all the variations of its domains and sub-domains that have been used to attack your site. Select country as a Second Dimension, found under Users, to see the global nature of this; truly, this is a devious botnet.
We have been hit a number of times, since January 2014, from computers located in almost 40 countries usually spread among several cities. This means they have infected a wide range of computers. Each attacks varies in the number hits. It eats into the bandwidth.
Most importantly, each one of these phony visits counts as a new visitor. This attack distorts the bounce rate and the visitor count by reporting both higher than the true numbers. Accurate analytics information is the foundation of an effective ecommerce marketing strategy.
Potentially, it could lead to Google demoting your website, or at least some of your pages, in the search results because the appear to be of low quality. Hopefully, Google is wise to this.
You can set up a filter, in Google Analytics, to prevent "semalt" visits from appearing in the Google Analytics reports. However, the filter will only prevent future visits from showing. According to postings on the web by others dealing with this, the most effective solution requires blocking in your website's .htaccess file.
It would be helpful if a 3dCart could comment, and even better, implement a solution.
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