If you watch your stats the way I do, you may have noticed little “Spam?” flags appear when you mouse over your list of referrers. Yet another new feature that WordPress has added without telling us. Unless you count a mention in the forums.
Or perhaps you’ve noticed a referrer called Semalt, or a search term with Semalt in it. Semalt is a spam site. The little spam flags are your way to block Semalt and any other referrers you think are spam. Click the flag to block the referrer. The block becomes permanent when you leave your stats page.
This is yet another way for spammers to get themselves listed in our stats and, unfortunately, skew our stats. Our readers won’t see these listings, but we will. And we’ll generate discussion, on both the WordPress forums and across the Internet. (And yes, I’m now guilty of giving them still more publicity.) Don’t visit their website and absolutely do not register with them if you do (they are masquerading as some sort of SEO operation).
Apparently they started hitting WordPress in early January. I was just lucky enough to not see them until today.
I learned of this new unannounced feature at the WordPress.com Forums one day and then I noticed the Flag Icons, my blog has been targeted by Semalt/Spamalt several times, thank you Piedtype for sharing that they are a Spam Website like I predicted/expected; and thank you for sharing another unannounced feature that most people probably have not heard about yet. 🙂
-John Jr
Just trying to be helpful.