[SOLVED] Semalt spam referrers

[spanishcivilwarstamps]

Hello everybody,

 

While reviweing my access logs for the issue previously commented here http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/376170-thousands-of-visits-from-st3cwlyahoocom-each-with-a-different-ip/ I've remembered about Semalt.

 

Semalt (and an endless variety of subdomains) usually hit my pages for their backlink building strategies. Any idea on how to stop these guys accessing my website? Does anyone know if Prestashop stores make public their stats? if not, I cannot understand the aim of these guys to get their anythingelse.semalt.com referrers on everyone's stats.

Edited November 4, 2014 by spanishcivilwarstamps (see edit history)

[vekia]

semalt is a seo tool used by to optimize seo of websites.

it looks like someone checking your website (via semalt) because you probably sell similar stuff ;-)

 

have you tried to block semalt with htaccess entries, for example like it is described here:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-block-semaltcom-from-visiting-your-wordpress-website

 

(it's for wordpress but .htaccess syntax and configuration of apache are the same)

[El Patron]

also I had similar issue...

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/2131[spam-filter]tip-15-16-and-custom-htaccess/?p=1562780

[spanishcivilwarstamps]

Thanks to you both for your replies.

 

El Patron: trying your solution I only get a trouble with Hotlink Protection in CPanel, resulting in that the intended urls to block get granted access to avoid hotlink protection. Strange, isn't it?

 

Vekia: I'm trying your tip. Is this format correct?:

 

#Block referer spam
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer semalt.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer st3.cwl.yahoo.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer buttons-for-website.com spammer=yes


Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=spammer

 

Should I close this directive with some 

</>

 or it is enough with this code?

 

I've also found another code:

 

setenvifnocase Referer "^http://www.spammers-domain.tld" spam_ref=1 
setenvifnocase Referer "^http://www.some-other-spammer.tld" spam_ref=1 
setenvifnocase Referer "^http://www.yet-another-spammer.tld" spam_ref=1 
&ltFilesMatch "(.*)"> 
Order Allow,Deny Allow from all 
Deny from env=spam_ref 
</FilesMatch>

 

Which one could work better?

 

Thanks again to both of you for your help.

[spanishcivilwarstamps]

I've checked the above code

#Block referer spam
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer semalt.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer st3.cwl.yahoo.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer buttons-for-website.com spammer=yes


Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=spammer

and it works perfectly, so I will mark this subject as solved.

 

Great solution to avoid annoying spam referers.

 

Another way to block Semalt from even checking your website from their url search bar is to block the IPs they use to scan sites. Here they are:

 

217.23.11.15

 

217.23.7.130

 

Blocking them, they even cannot collect any data from your website. Check regularly for changes in these IPs, doing the following: search your own domain name through semalt website and have a look on your latest visits logs in your hosting account, to check if their IPs have changed. If so, add the new IPs to your IP Deny Manager.

 

More fun to block them: block their user agents and blank user agents through htaccess with this code:

 

# BLOCK USER AGENTS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} NerdyBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Validator.nu/LV [NC]
RewriteRule !^robots\.txt$ - [F]


# BLOCK BLANK USER AGENTS
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^-?$
RewriteRule ^ - [F]

Even more blockade for this people: avoid your Google Analytcs account of taking reccord of their visits.

 

In your Analytics account, go to Admin -> All Filters -> New filter.

 

Name it something like "Exclude semalt", select "Custom" in "Filter type" field and select "Request URI" in "Filter field". Write "semalt.com" in "Filter Pattern" field and add "All web site data" in "Apply filter to views". Doing this you prevent them of getting their records in your analytic stats.

 

All these solutions work for any spam referer. Enjoy them!

[Jean.M]

Great,

 

thanks for the info!

[bsm]

I blocked spammers in htaccess like below:

 

#Block referer spam
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer semalt.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer st3.cwl.yahoo.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer buttons-for-website.com spammer=yes

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer social-buttons.com spammer=yes


Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=spammer

 

but now I'm getting spam from site31.social-buttons.com

 

How to block social-buttons spam with all of variations?