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Thread ID: 93254	2008-09-09 09:19:00	Porn links appearing in referring sites section of my sites stats	Morgenmuffel (187)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
703920	2008-09-09 09:19:00	Hi all I'll bet 99% of you are here just for a nosey, but anyway In one of the sites i manage it has AWstats and as part of that package it will list referring sites, as in sites that have referred people to this site, now I have had a number of dodgy porn/tobacco sites listed in these, and I am wondering how they get themselves listed in here. I went to one of the tobacco sites and there was no "link" to my site. so how do they do it?	Morgenmuffel (187)
703921	2008-09-09 11:03:00	It's called referer spam (en.wikipedia.org), spammers can spider the web faking a referer (the website they're advertising) getting a linkback now and then from those that link referers.	sal (67)
703922	2008-09-09 12:32:00	I'm not you are interpreting correctly what the referrer actualy means Nigel it will list referring sites, as in sites that have referred people to this site I went to one of the tobacco sites and there was no "link" to my site. The "referrer" in the stats is the page they came from before navigating to a page on your site. There is no link or anything to your site from those sites - the word [Referrers] in this sense simply means [Page I Just Came From] So, it's either as Sal says..... or there's just a few peeps navigating back and forth between some porn etc and your site! :) each time a page is loaded, the "referrer" page is added in awstats log You'll see a lot of your site's own pages being listed as referrers as well - when a user moves from one page to another, the page he just left is the referrer...	bevy121 (117)
703923	2008-09-09 12:44:00	Porn and ..... Tobacco sites ! Now ... Aren't YOU a lucky boy !! Cool :banana	DUNK (1527)
703924	2008-09-09 20:27:00	The "referrer" in the stats is the page they came from before navigating to a page on your site. I'm pretty sure thats not correct as i regularly go to the site from pressf1 (and a couple of other sites) and pressf1 (or the other sites) never appear in the logs. If I take out the porn and cigarette links and I check the ones that are left they all have a link back somewhere on their site, so i guess there is not much I can do about it, as i already have the stats pages hidden from the public. With these things it's always about getting the correct terminology isn't it And referer spam was such an obvious term I rather embarassed that i missed it	Morgenmuffel (187)
703925	2008-09-10 02:52:00	sites that have referred people to this site, now I have had a number of dodgy porn/tobacco sites listed in these, Does it matter how/where they come from, so long as they are finding you?	pctek (84)
703926	2008-09-10 04:48:00	Does it matter how/where they come from, so long as they are finding you? Not really It's more a case of wanting to know, so that when someone asks me why those sites are appearing in their stats I can tell them, and because in the past there has only ever been one or two sites at most appearing in my stats, this time there was a heap, and also because I'm curious and nosey	Morgenmuffel (187)
703927	2008-09-10 05:09:00	Try doing a little research on the meaning of referrer in relation to http headers, which is where AWstats etc get the information from. or check this - Web Site Statistics Terminology and Explanation (support.quadrahosting.com) Referrers are those URLs that lead a user to your site or caused the browser to request something from your server. The vast majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files. If one of your HTML pages contains links to 10 graphic images, then each request for the HTML page will produce 10 more hits with the referrer specified as the URL of your own HTML page. or Referrer : The referrer is the place where a visitor has been immediately prior to visiting a website, usually by clicking a link from there. The information about the referrer comes from the browser's history. Analysis tools sometimes only reveal the domains of the referring sites, although in most cases it would be crucial to know from exactly which page and which context someone was referred. Referrers of particular interest are search engines, and many tools compile a list of search terms that visitors have entered before finding the site. It should be noted that visitors may have blocked the referrer report, and that clicking a bookmark or directly entering the URL may and should result in unresolved referrers. I always have entries for "forums.pcworld.co.nz listed in the "referrers" in the stats for the sites I administer, and there is definitely no "link back" from here!	bevy121 (117)
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