Weird referral domains

Happened to me as well in the past with one of my sites and it tanked. The problem is, that Google is way too confident with their algorithm saying you should not disavow these. They can detect these links and ignore them.

The reality is, they are not at all as good at it as they claim. But on the other hand, disavow tool has been built for different purpose, so I wouldn't use it extensively for this case.

That being said, negative SEO is still a thing and the only thing you can ensure such activities doesn't affect your performance is to focus more on the positive side; build more links, optimize and make sure such links make up for a fraction of % of your link profile.

Yeah, that's the problem alright. Google is too confident about what it's indexing. You'd think that junk domains wouldn't carry weight in the algorithm.

I reckon that Google thinks we're doing blackhat SEO. These junk links are attributed to us, even though we have no idea where they come from.

Did you ever find out where the links to your site came from?

It was a sneaky attack, because you wouldn't see the links appear on the site but when I checked page code it was there.

That was well executed though because you wouldn't be able to track down the provider of the site. To me, it seemed like a PBN that was already revealed internally by Google and therefore lost the ranks and became poisonous. The owner probably "took advantage" of this and used it to attack competition.

This is just a hypothesis, but it did the harm because my site went to zero... I am still not sure what could I do to avoid this.

Weird referral domains often appear in website analytics, usually as spam or bot traffic. They can skew metrics and mislead data analysis. Identifying and blocking these domains helps maintain accurate performance insights.

Weird referral domains, also known as referrer spam, often show up in website analytics, usually sent by bots or automated scripts. These domains don’t represent real visitors and can skew important metrics like traffic volume, bounce rates, or session duration, leading to misleading conclusions about your website’s performance. When spammy domains inflate your traffic stats, it becomes harder to gauge the true behavior of your actual audience, affecting decisions on content, SEO, and marketing strategies. To maintain accurate data, it's essential to regularly review and block these domains by using tools like Google Analytics filters or server-side solutions. This ensures that your performance insights remain clean and reliable.