Is this referrer spam? I don't get it...

Posted By: texaskatt ()
Posted On: 2005-Jul-27 16:15

I keep seeing a video game site showing up as a referring site. I've checked the site, it looks spammy and has absolutely no links to my site, nor is it relevant to my site. My logs are not available to spiders or anyone else. If this is a failed attempt at referrer spam, I probably shouldn't worry, but I'm not really sure what it is or whether I should be concerned. Any ideas would be appreciated.


Posted By: texaskatt ()
Posted On: 2005-Jul-27 16:22

Hmm... I just did a header check on the site and it has a bunch of php stuff that I don't understand, plus something about rare coins... I'm sure they're up to something sneaky but I'm not sure whether I should be concerned. Help?


Posted By: g1smd (Staff)
Posted On: 2005-Jul-27 17:37

See if you can find a Google cache for any of their pages, then compare it with the direct view that you get when you go to the same page.


Posted By: texaskatt ()
Posted On: 2005-Jul-27 23:23

Thanks g1 -- I had to search Google with the full domain name to find them, now I see that they are set up as one of those crappy fake search engines that I hope G is getting rid of. I found a number of pages with "You searched the web for games" or "You searched the web for needlepoint" then it says the top ten bidded results are shown. Should I report them to Google? Can they hurt my website's rankings in any way?


Posted By: OAC (Staff)
Posted On: 2005-Jul-28 08:03

"Should I report them to Google?"

Waste of time, IMO.

"Can they hurt my website's rankings in any way?"

If your logs are truly not spiderable then no way. If your logs are spiderable, then unlikely, especially if the logs are only up for a week or so (most major web hosts delete log files over a week old or place them in areas where they can't be spidered).

Those turkeys are trying to exploit a former weakness in the Google link algorithm that now doesn't exist (or has been addressed), as far as I am aware.