Roy Schestowitz wrote:
__/ [ Alric Knebel ] on Monday 22 May 2006 13:31 \__
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
__/ [ Alric Knebel ] on Monday 22 May 2006 09:59 \__
I was looking at the AWSTATS screen for my website, and I followed an
odd link that was listed as something that linked to my site. I
followed it to this:
www.anonym.to
It was mostly some foreign site, but there was a paragraph in English at
the very top. I really didn't understand what it meant. Do any of you
understand what this means?
_______
English version: to make a long story short: anonym.to is a free and
easy way to block the referrer when a visitor clicks a link on your
homepage. It works with every browser as you do only have to add a
http://anonym.to/? in front of every outgoing http:// link. Use it as
you want.
________
Thank you so much in advance.
Hi,
Let me begin by warning you that the service of this site seems
questionable because your visitors can be redirected anywhere, without
your awareness. Before moving on, ensure you can establish trust with the
site in question, as well as depend on its long-term existence (also see
snipurl.com and tinyurl.com for similar issues).
To clarify, whenever you request a file (e.g. Web page), your Web browser
sends a request to the site in question. That request is being recorded
(unless just dumped), along with some extra details passed by the browser.
This may include the address of the referring site (the referrer), which
helps the Webmaster keep track of _where visitors come from_. The site
above offers you some sort of protection. It acts as a middleman. By
endowing many links to that site (which give it high(er) ranks by the
way), you can hide yourself as the origin of visitor clicks. I don't know
why you would ever want to do this. As I said, having _not_ yet looked at
the site in question, it rings large bells of alarm. There must be better
and easier methods for achieving the same thing, although the Web browser
of the visitor may stand in the way.
One alternative and similar approach are scripts like go.php (and
variants), which enable you to hide the destination of links (also
external) while relying on your own site and being able to track clicks on
links to external sites. It also can preserve ranks that are important for
search engine status.
Thank you very much for that information. Maybe how I came upon this
site would add even more understanding, and further explanation of
whatever you think it really means. I have a website, and I look every
few days at that stats, as I said, AWSTATS. It's supplied by my
webhosting provider. While a lot of it is Greek to me, I look to see
what link was followed to MY site; I think your used the term
"referred." I have another website I set up for a different theme, but
it has a link to THIS site (the one in my signature), and from a
previous the address in another webhosting provider, a sort of
forwarding address. So I recognize those two as my own. Sometimes I
click on the link to follow it back, because sometimes it's a mystery
where it's coming from. Among the links when I looked last night was
the link above, the one I'm asking about. Somebody had come to my site
through THAT site. I clicked on it and followed it back. I have no
idea what it really means. I believe the site is German. I have no
relationship with that site at all.
I immediately feared I had been vandalized, but I was uncertain. It
isn't possible to shanghai visitors to a site, is it? I keep reading
the passage above -- the one I posted, from the site -- over and over,
and it just doesn't get any clearer what it does.
This is known as referrer spam. By following that link from AWStats, you
fulfilled the desires of the spammer, who tried to get your attention or
simply appear in some public statistics pages. You are urged not to follow
unfamiliar links from AWStats because it encourages the offender/spammer to
carry on with the same practice, which adds 'noise' to your stats.
consider yourself lucky. See:
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2005/10/15/aftermath-attack/
Also see how noisy my referrer stats have become:
http://www.schestowitz.com/temp/referrals-december.jpg
Seek an explanation about referrer spam. It is only one among plenty of ill
things that you will find in Web stats.
Best wishes,
Roy
Thanks a lot. I looked at the stats and I see some sort of drug company
were spamming you. I need to look this up, to see how these guys really
gain from this. So far, the one we're discussing has been the only
referral link that was perplexing to me to the point that I couldn't
follow it. It'll be quite a chain in some other legitimate referrals.
These spammers, I don't see how they benefit.
--
Alric Knebel
http://www.ironeyefortress.com/C-SPAN_loon.html
http://www.ironeyefortress.com
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