Spammy Tactics?

[DEone]

Question...

I've noticed a lot of sites that seemingly link to mine lately... I get many hits (an unrealistic amount) from them on certain days.

When I visit the site by clicking on their link via my reports page, I see my link on their site.

However, when I visit the site by directly typing in the url in my browser(instead of clicking on the link within my report), there is no link to my site on their page.

The link only exists on the site when I visit it via a link on my own website. Of course the only link to them on my site appears in my traffic reports, I otherwise don't have a link to the sites on any pages within mine.

I have yet to think of a good reason for a website to do this kind of thing but it seems shady to me and I thought I'd see what you guys (and ladies) have to say...

any ideas?

[flood6]

Yeah, it sounds shady. There's something called "referrer spam" or "log spam" where people will program spiders to visit lots of sites and report the spammer's site as the referrer. The spammer's hope is that either the logs are public with clickable links (when they show up they get link popularity), or you simply visit to see why they're linking to you and you buy something from them.

There are usually no links to your site from theirs because they are doing this to hundreds or thousands of other sites. If you are seeing a link to your site when you visit them via a link, they are likely employing some kind of script that gets a visitors referrer and adds it as an outbound link. I guess the idea is to trick link exchange partners or not let on that they're being clever.

A good way to check this stuff out is to check the Google cache of the page in question. This will tell you what Google sees when they visit. You could also create a link to their site here and click it, I bet you'd see a link to WPW where you sometimes see the link to your site (you can do this privately by sending yourself a PM or just including the link in a post, then "preview", then click the link).

I'd be very curious to see this page for myself to see if I can figure out what they're trying to do.

Good luck.

[DEone]

Originally Posted by flood6

If you are seeing a link to your site when you visit them via a link, they are likely employing some kind of script that gets a visitors referrer and adds it as an outbound link. I guess the idea is to trick link exchange partners or not let on that they're being clever.

I'd be very curious to see this page for myself to see if I can figure out what they're trying to do.

Good luck.

Yeah, I haven't looked too closely at the source code but at a glance I didn't see code that would render the referrer... it's prob being done server side...

Seems like a stupid way to get traffic but if that's all they are doing then I'm not as worried about it. Initially I was concerned because over the past 2 days I've recieved 575 hits from that site...

While I hate to provide the site w. more traffic I'll post the link... It's a crappy site anyway and I wouldn't think that anyone who visits it would buy from them or support them in any way.

www.petinformation4you.com/blog/blink1.html

And I'll bet that you're right in that clicking on the link from this post will cause WPW to show up on the page...

If anynone has any other ideas or think there should be a reason for concern on my part, lemme know!

thanks Flood!

[gdwoods]

ahhhh, interesting... Lately I've been seeing lots of these in my logs as well, mostly from online gambling sites.

[DEone]

Yeah!!! Originally most of the sites I noticed were gambling sites too.

I just don't get it!

[toroandbruin]

I think what you're seeing are "Scraper Sites".

The site owner gets a domain name something like "verybestinfo.com" and with software creates sites such as "verybestinfo.com/travel", "verybestinfo.com/pets", etc. There must be some excellent scraper software because sometimes the resulting page is a decent list of appropriate Websites. Usually it is a waste of time, though. The Scraper makes his money from the Google Ads he incorporates into the pages. Such pages often show up well in search engines and, to increase visitors, the owner does a spam mailing to the Websites on the pages suggesting a link exchange.

Since we're financially oriented, I get spam emails from money-related scraper sites.

I don't think there's anything you can do about them.

[incrediblehelp]

Yup referrer spam and scrapper spam are worthless and you don't have to worry about them.

[DEone]

thanks everyone

i still dont see how this type of thing can be worthwhile... unless some idiot takes their link and posts it to a forum so others can visit... um... like i just did... drat!

[tinobuntic]

Their site is a stupid pet site of some sort. If they do this to hundreds of "pet" sites and they visit just like you did, I'm sure they're just hoping for you to click on a Google ad. What a way to make money!

[minorgod]

I could be way off on this one, but I think what they are doing is hiding your link to everyone except you. This would be useful in a "link exchange" program if you wanted to get someone with a high pagerank to link to your site, but you didn't want to have a real reciprocal link back to them. 1-way inbound links to a site are much better for your pagerank than a reciprocal link, so they are most likely hiding the link back to your site to most visitors and spiders simply to make it look like they have a 1-way link pointing from your site to theirs. If you have no link pointing to their site, then this really doesn't matter. They probably submitted an automated link request to you and you never linked back to them, but they still post a link to you that is visible only when you visit, just in case you did link to them and then went to check to make sure the gave you a reciprocal link. Anyway, that's just a theory.

[ozzie_jim]

You think that's good ...

Some guy has built a whole site to sell my products. I don't know who this person is or why they've done it. His site is here:

http://www.expresso-machines.com.au/

If you click on small machines or large machines on the left that's all my stuff that he's selling using direct links. So far this month over 300 people have come to my site through his. I love it.

[Weedy Lady]

I catch people who are hotlinking to my graphics by checking my referrer stats.

Since my site is graphic intensive I have a major problem with people hotlinking to my pictures. When I find them I write and tell them to remove my code, which often is the whole page and not just a link to one graphic. A lot of times I can't find exactly who is doing this though because it's a forum that you have to be a member of to access.

And no, I cannot use hotlinking protection because when I turn it on NONE of my java applets will work. And it messes up a lot of other stuff also. I've tried it several times.

So I just move my graphics quite often. That has helped slow down some of the worst offenders.

If you don't have a problem with graphics being linked to, then it is the scapper stuff the other guys have discussed.

[bj]

FYI there are some .htaccess games you can play with referrer spam of any sort, whether it's hotlinking, or this other sort. Here's a couple links that might shine some light on this subject.

hostmatters thread

wordpress thread

[ron angel]

If somebody links to your pictures place your site address somewhere prominent in the picture. this will give you free advertising/referrals to your site.
or if you want them to stop rename an "adult" or picture inappropriate to the site with the same name
& place on your server renaming & changing the link on your site to the original one.....

www.ssrichardmontgomery.net

[Inspector]

Originally Posted by ron angel

or if you want them to stop rename an "adult" or picture inappropriate to the site with the same name
& place on your server renaming & changing the link on your site to the original one.....
[/url]

That is sneaky, underhanded and devilish. I love it! Both ideas are very good.

I personally wouldn't use the adult photo, but I would replace it with a graphic of my logo, or better yet make a graphic that says "This idiot keeps stealing my artwork."

[Inspector]

I've been seeing a lot of underhanded, link tactics lately. I call them blackhat linkers.

They email you for a link and provide an address of their link page. Problem is, the link page is NOT accessible from their home page, it's a dummy page not seen by spiders.

Or - The link page is 3 or 4 pages deep into their site.

I just ignore their requests. I have hundreds of WORTHLESS links to my site from these low life scammers.

[DEone]

Originally Posted by Inspector

I've been seeing a lot of underhanded, link tactics lately. I call them blackhat linkers.

They email you for a link and provide an address of their link page. Problem is, the link page is NOT accessible from their home page, it's a dummy page not seen by spiders.

Amen!!!

Same here... why must they be so shady? And it is rather insulting to my intelligence!

[TrafficProducer]

Yup referrer spam and scrapper spam are worthless and you don't have to worry about them.

Maybe any Hit is a good Hit, or at least better for boosting Alexa Ranking etc...

Page Rank Links

[freehits]

Originally Posted by flood6

The spammer's hope is that either the logs are public with clickable links (when they show up they get link popularity), or you simply visit to see why they're linking to you and you buy something from them.

More than simply a spammers hope, generally do a Quotes search on google for some footer text from the common stats programs, then feed the google resulting urls into their program or script, and they have an instant list of public stat pages.

As for the hotlinks? I fed a hotlinking ebay seller a lovely picture that no non-adult should ever have to see, then wrote ebay to report the awful graphic images one of their sellers was displaying.

I recommend wearing depends-undergaments when doing this, because it is too damn funny to witness.

[SportsFan]

Originally Posted by freehits

As for the hotlinks? I fed a hotlinking ebay seller a lovely picture that no non-adult should ever have to see, then wrote ebay to report the awful graphic images one of their sellers was displaying.

I recommend wearing depends-undergaments when doing this, because it is too damn funny to witness.

Funny! This happens to me a lot too. I have an ebay seller who is selling President Nixon Cufflinks who is currently linking to my site for an mp3 of "Hail to the Chief". I changed the song on him and so far he has not noticed or cared. It's really funny. You can see (hear) it at http://cgi.ebay.com/1969-Nixon-Inaug...QQcmdZViewItem


And if anyone wants to hear it, the real "Hail to the Chief" can be found on my website at http://www.calendar-updates.com/info...president.aspx


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[AzGoldPros]

LOL, now that's funny SportsFan. Unfortunately it takes a bit of time to d/l for those who are on dial-up. I had a guy decide to rip the index page off one of my sites to use on some Eastern European auction site somewhere I think in Chechoslavakia or closeby. I noticed a lot of clicks coming in from links I didn't recognize on my stats so checked it out and there was my page, pics, links and all! The stupid dumb*** forgot to take my links out and everyone was coming to my website when they clicked on the links! LOL. I dropped the price on my product by $5 and sold the heck out of them until his auction went off. When he renewed he realized his mistake and took my links out so I complained to the auction house he'd ripped off my site then and he was shut down in about a week and didn't do it again. It's always a kick to outwitt a stupid thief so my hat's off to you on this one.

To expand on this discussion, I've noted, when checking for links to many of my sites, other websites I didn't recognize as linking partners linking to mine. In the cached page the links were there to my site on some and on others it had been removed or it was just the URL of my site but not an actual link. I think they feel if they either put the URL of or a link to a site that has high PR and first page SERPS it somehow ripps off some of that site's PR or popularity and transfers it to theirs. Not sure how yet, but I am sure they are doing something we haven't figured out yet and when we do we are all going to be ready to grab a rope and string em up high! Some are like mentioned above just trying to get traffic that will hopefully click on their AdWords.

I recently changed over 150 sites to hotlink protection. When I first started out building sites I used to borrow my own pics etc from a mega bandwidth site I had so many of those old links still exist. I've since changed this practice as the search engines frowned on this and realized I still had many sites that still used the links. Oh boy, what a thrill to check a site for the first time in many months to see no pics etc, lol. The good thing is it forces you to check your sites again and make sure they are functioning properly. I reoptimize my sites at least once annualy but cannot do it more than that for all of them as there are way too many. I still have over 100 to put up! Anyway, when I optimize it can take an hour on each page sometimes as there are so many changes in the year's time since it was last optimized that it's a major change sometimes. I am sure you can all relate if you've not touched a site for a year and then go in to optimize it and wonder what the heck you were thinking back then when you coded it, lol. But it really wasn't you so much as how the rules are constantly changing to pursue that #1 position for your site. Oh well, just sharing some thoughts here so if anyone figures out why these sites "ghost" our sites with or without real links let me know as I am interested in what their angle actually is.