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by Vickie J. Scanlon


What is referrer spam? Can it affect your blog or website? The answer is yes. I'll tell you what it is, how it can affect you and what you can do about it.


Where does Referrer Spam Hit?

Referrer Spam hits your referrer logs within your traffic stats-be it a blog or website. The purpose of the referrer logs are intended to collect information on who is visiting and what they are doing on your site. Here's a clean sample of a Referrer's Section of your log.


Top 40 of 203 Total Referrers
# Hits Referrer
1 154 1.42% http://www.google.com/search
2  79  0.73% http://www.google.co.uk/search



The Referrers Section usually gives you a good indicator of what is going on within your site-as to visitors. But when referrer spam hits, your stats go out the window.


Referrer Spam-What Is It?

Now, when Referrer Spam hits your referral log files you may see something unusual. The below is a what you might find in your referrer section within your backend stats:


Top 40 of 203 Total Referrers
# Hits Referrer
1 5038 60.0% http://fakeurl/search
2 154 1.42% http://www.google.com/search
3 79 0.73% http://www.google.co.uk/search


Now do you see something unusual about the hits above? You should. The number of hits from the fakeurl/search is not in line with the other hits on the site.

And, if you are like any curious human being, you want to know why you are getting over 5038 hits, with the hits still climbing by the hour. Don't get excited, that maybe your site is suddenly became popular and an instant success.

So, what do you do? You click the link to find out. That's what I did, and what I found was many different advertising sites flipping, one after the other. I killed the url. I just witnessed Referrer Spam. I have to say I'm really lucky, I got rotating advertising sites, but the pornography sites use this tactic as well.

What is Referrer Spam Tactics

Referrer spam is a tactic that is directly aimed at the Search Engines. The spammer makes repeated web site requests using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. 

The sites that publicize their access logs, will be linked to the spammer site, which will then be indexed by the search engines. The benefit of the spammer is a free link and improved search engine placement. Why? The Spammer's site shows improved search engine placement because of the link-counting algorithms that the search engines use.


Your downside:

1) it destroys your stats within the referrer logs.
2) It steals your bandwidth. And for those with limited hosting plans this can be costly.


Now, you may think this is amusing at first. But that thinking quickly wanes and soon you are getting a little upset with this obnoxious and intrusive tactic. Because it is inferring with your business.


Stopping The Referrer Spammer

How do you stop the referrer Spammer? The following command in your .htaccess file will eliminate the problem.

order allow,deny
deny from 000.000.00.000 (being the IP address)
allow from all


As you can see, referrer spam can cause havoc for your blog or website. So, yes, it is important to know what is going on with your website by keeping an eye on
your backend stats.




About the Author:

Vickie J Scanlon --   Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz
for ebooks, desktops and laptop deals, security utilities accounting software for consumer and business, where to report scams, tech accessories,  and "how to" on the different phases of Affiliate Marketing/Internet Marketing.

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