Spam queries seen in Google Analytics reports

Recently I started using Google Search Console and I was curious to see a query: "motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ google-wins-legal-battle-against-pro-trump-spammer-over-the-letter-g"

The attack vector is called "referrer spam" and apart from being anoying it has little impact on a websites operation.

I had an earlier page on referrer spam - I will re-post it.

Vitaly Popov

The reference I first found was to "motherboard.vice.com with page title google-liar.ru" - from analytics-toolkit.com.

This sounded familiar and I remembered that I was looking at this in 2015 and Vitaly was up to his tricks even then. I have an earlier page on this but it is now archived and the antics of Mr. Popov have matured into the Trump era!