I spent a while chatting with StatTraq author Randy Peterman over the last few days, we’re both interested in how to remove (or hide) referral spam from site usage statistics in order that they may be a realistic and meaningful reflection of actual human visitors.

After a little hacking I’m pleased to say that I now have a version of StatTraq that can automatically identify referral spam as it arrives. Every hit is still still added to the database, but hits from spammers are marked as such, which means that when the stats are viewed, spam can be excluded.

Interestingly this also means that spam statistics can also be analysed.

I’m going to be working with Randy (as time permits us both) in order to get these additions integrated into the main release.

I already have a cleanup-script so existing stat-traq users will be able to cleanse their database and not lose any of their existing data about visitors or spammers.

Beta testers, developers & people with requests and suggestions ; please leave a message.