A popular referral spam named Addons.mozilla.org has recently been reported as a great disturbance to website owners. This spam creates some fake data inside Google Analytics and messes up the statistics of the targeted website. If you are on this page, the chance is that you are probably having a close encounter with this annoying spam and you are probably looking for a solution to block it. Here we are going to talk about the specifics of Addons.mozilla.org and the possible inconvenience it may create. If you don’t want to tolerate it, in the removal guide below you will find an effective way to get rid of it. And we would encourage you to do so if you want to keep your website stats realistic and useful.
First thing’s first: how dangerous can Addons.mozilla.org be?
As a website owner, you probably know how important the data about your website is and how much you rely on its accuracy in order to build your online marketing strategies for development. That’s why having referral spam like Addons.mozilla.org could be quite annoying, especially when it manipulates the statistics about your website’s traffic with fake visits. This could create quite misleading information about the real way your website is positioned on the web and may totally get you lost in the picture. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be dealt with and there really isn’t any need to panic. Generally, referral spam does not pose any malicious threat to your website or your security. It will not affect your real traffic or website visits and popularity if this can comfort you somehow. However, it may pollute the real statistics about it with some fake information, which can really mislead you in the long term. That’s why blocking it as soon as possible is highly recommended if you want to keep getting reliable statistics about your website positioning and performance on the web.
What is the goal of referral spam?
If you are wondering why anyone would target your website with annoying spam and create all these fake visits in your Google Analytics, then you may find this information interesting. Spammers usually use two types of spam – the classic referral spam and the so-called Ghost spam. These both have one goal – to make the website owners curious enough to click and see where all this huge amount of traffic from the stats on their website is coming from. The moment they click on the spammers’ site, their goal is completed – they receive real visits and this way they grow the traffic of their own site and boost it ahead in Google’s ranking. The spammers usually target thousands of websites with their spam, so you can imagine how big the traffic they get is. This is a Black hat SEO practice and Google is trying its best to restrict is as much as possible. In fact, the classic referral spam, which uses bots and crawlers to create fake traffic visits, has been successfully limited in the past few years. But its evolved version, the Ghost spam, is still creating issues for website owners. Addons.mozilla.org is one such spam and it doesn’t need bots or crawlers to mess up your stats, because it directly manipulates your Google Analytics statistics by faking website visits. And even though it will not do anything malicious to your site, if you don’t block it on time, at some point it will provide you with inaccurate Google Analytics stats, which may be misleading if you rely on them to develop your website. That’s why removing Addons.mozilla.org on time can save you from the disinformation that may follow.
How can you effectively block the referral spam and prevent it in the future?
It is not excluded that at some point you may come across spam like Addons.mozilla.org . Unfortunately, such spam is widely distributed on the web nowadays and there are no 100% effective methods of prevention, but there are a few things one could do to avoid it. Having a reputed and reliable hosting of your website is one major thing that website owners can do. The reputed hosting companies usually have good spam filters, which prevent spam from targeting the hosted sites. Cheap hosting, on the other hand, may not be able to provide the same protection. Blocking the spam once you’ve been targeted may be a bit tricky, but the removal guide below contains some effective ways you can use to get rid of it. Give them a try and let us know in case you need some assistance.
Block Addons.mozilla.org in Google Analytics
Instruction #1: Enter your Analytics account.
After that load Admin and then – All Filters.
Instruction #2: After that, hit New Filter.
Next, add Addons.mozilla.org in the Filter Name value.
Instruction #3. Choose the Custom Filter Type.
Once you see the Filter Field, go with Campaign Source.
Next, when you see the Filter Pattern text box, enter Addons.mozilla.org . Confirm by clicking the Save button you will see at the bottom.
How to block Addons.mozilla.org referrer spam using your .htaccess file
If you are aware of a way to access your .htaccess file, you will just have to write the code below in there:
## SITE REFERRER BANNING
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} Addons.mozilla.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} Addons.mozilla.org
RewriteRule .* – [F]
In case you are not aware of a way to access it, follow these instructions:
Access your cPanel account,
the go to File Manager.
After that you should mark the check-box ‘Document Root for’.
Then go to your webpage.
Another important tip: choose ‘Show hidden Files’.
After that select Go.
Look for the .htacess file.
Once you find it, right–click it.
From the options that appear, select Code Edit.
Enter the code above and Save Changes.
Hopefully, we have been helpful! Tell us in the comment section. We will be glad to read what your opinion is!