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Over the past few weeks it became apparent that my server was handling quite a lot more traffic than it used to – resulting in nasty spikes in CPU and memory usage.
With my hosts (Bytemark in York) convinced there was nothing physically wrong with the server I dug a little deeper to try and ascertain what was causing the problem.
Looking at some Google Analytics data for a number of my busiest websites, it became apparent that they were handling a lot of referral traffic from unfavourable sources. I can’t really say what the purpose of these sites are – but all they seem to do is direct quite a large amount of traffic to random websites.
Not only does this result in stretched server resources, but it also totally messes up the Google Analytics data (making a site look much busier than it actually is).
Blocking the referrers seemed like a good idea, so I’ve used .htaccess to do so, making use of this very usueful .htaccess generator.
This is what I now have at the top of my .htaccess files for the sites which appeared to be getting most of this referral traffic:
# BLOCK SITE REFERRERS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} trafficmonetize.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} 4webmasters.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} webmonetizer.net [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} 100dollars-seo.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-your-website.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} 24753470.videos-for-your-business.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} semaltmedia.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} best-seo-offer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} howtostopreferralspam.eu [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} erot.co [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} guardlink.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www1.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www.event-tracking.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www2.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www3.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www4.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-your-website.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www7.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www.Get-Free-Traffic-Now.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www5.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} best-seo-offer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} free-share-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www6.free-social-buttons.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} www8.free-social-buttons.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
Feel free to copy this into your .htaccess file – the list of sites is compiled from the referrer data in from Google Analytics for a number of the affected sites.
Have you got any suggestions to make to improve this – or a different approach? Get in touch and let me know!