Monday, 28 October 2013
Using .htaccess to block referrer spam
Lately referrer spam became a great annoyance for the webmasters. If you are not sure what referrer spam is you may wish to check this article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer_spam
To block these spam referrers you need the following lines in your .htaccess file:
# set the spam_ref variable SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://(www.)?some-spammer.com" spam_ref=1 SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://(www.)?other-spammer.com" spam_ref=1 SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^casino-poker" spam_ref=1 # block all referres that have spam_ref set <FilesMatch "(.*)"> Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=spam_ref </FilesMatch>
The first lines “setenvifnocase” assign a span_ref environment variable. Then we deny all access to such referrers in the FilesMatch clause.
You can also use wildcards with the above .htaccess directives to match a variety of hosts. For example, you can use
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "*some_word*" spam_ref=1
to match all referrers that contain the word 'some_word'.
For example you can ban visits from referral sites that contain in their domains words like: phentermine, viagra, cialis, shemale, porn, nude, celebrity, etc.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment