Free-Share-Buttons.com spam seems to be the most common ghost referrer spam out there. In fact, this spam seems to affect my Google Analytics data across all of my sites, even my new sites! Currently, my Google Analytics data for this site shows that 159 of my visits in the last month have come from free-share-buttons alone, so I’ve decided to filter this data out and show you how I’m going to do it.
How To Block Free-Share-Buttons.com Spam: Filter Method
The easiest way (and the way I always filter out this type of referrer spam) to filter out Free-Share-Buttons.com referrer traffic is to simply follow the instructions below:
1. Log Into Your Google Analytics Account
2. Go To Your “Admin” Tab
3. Click On “Filters” Under The “View” Section
4. Click On “+New Filter”
5. Enter The Information In The Image Below And Save
How To Block Free-Share-Buttons.com Spam: Htaccess Method
In every article I’ve written about ghost referrer spam, I never recommend using this method or the following method if the referrer spam is indeed ghost referrer spam that never actually visits your site.
## SITE REFERRER BANNING
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} Free-Share-Buttons.com [NC,OR] RewriteRule .* – [F]
How To Block Free-Share-Buttons.com Spam: Deflecting Method
This is not a recommended method, but you can create a text file called “deflector.map” and add the following code to it:
#
## deflector.map
##
##referer –> redirect target
http://Free-Share-Buttons.com http://Free-Share-Buttons.com
After that, you’re going to want to add the following code to your .htaccess
RewriteMap deflector txt:/path/to/deflector.map
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=””
RewriteCond ${deflector:%{HTTP_REFERER}} =-
RewriteRule ^ %{HTTP_REFERER} [R,L]
Why Does Free-Share-Buttons Referrer Spam Occur?
Unlike other referrer spam, visiting free-share-buttons.com is safe since there is no longer a website associated with it. There isn’t even a 301 redirect taking you to a porn site like Guardlink or pop-under landing page like 4webmasters. Checking the Wayback Machine also yields no results, suggesting that this site blocked web crawlers at one point. Since the only thing I have to go off of is the name of the site, I’ll just assume it was a site that sold social sharing buttons and gained its traffic through referrer spam.