Annoying BLOG visitation script to get traffic?

[deist]

Is anyong else getting lots of visits from obscure blogs lately... They make it look like you got a referral from them, but in actuality there is no mention of your site or link to your site on the blog.

Here is a short list of blogs that have done this to my sites... and all of these blogs have their own latest referrers list. You can see that a lot of their "latest referrers" are simply people, like me, following the referrals from their statistics programs because they have :2082 at the end of the domain.

What a lame way to get traffic to your blog. My concern also is that this will become a new form of spam.

[edited by: oilman at 5:52 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
[edit reason] please don't mention specific blogs [/edit]

[pshea]

yes, just noticed this in the past two days.

[1milehgh80210]

This is apparently a new? spamming technique used by porn sites.
[idly.org...] has more info.

[panic]

One of my sites has been getting hits from those "blogs" for about the past week or so, and it looks like they're just having one user agent hit random pages, and spoof the HTTP_REFERER with the URL to their blog.

Other than getting one visit from webmasters/admins who see their URL in their referrals, I don't see why they would even bother doing this. They don't have anything that they can profit from on these pages (no affiliate links, banner ads, etc), so I'm completely lost as to why they would even do this.

-panic

[panic]

As I was posting my reply, it looks like 1milehgh80210 hit it right on the money.

-panic

[deejay]

Other than getting one visit from webmasters/admins

Sure it's worthwhile. As much as any other misleading/untargetted advertising.

Webmasters are perverts too.

...wait ...there's a marketable bumper sticker in that somewhere.

time for one post this week.. I can't believe this is it. :)

[Slone]

I have seen this... however I have seen our link on some blog sites one minute and gone the next.

Spam. Now just an overlooked hit.

[cfx211]

I've seen this too, but don't immediately believe that this done for the same reason as porn or affiliate sites. I say this because bloggers are mainly a bunch of low key no money involved sites and this seems like too much effort for something that is not a money maker.

Maybe there is an ulterior motive at work like hacker places adware or something nasty on blog sites, then does a bunch of reffering url spoofing to bring people into those sites...

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

I started getting these visits to my site too after I got an account at blogspot.com. Guess they try to promote their own sites.

[Marketing Guy]

Porn sites target market:

18 to 50 (plus) males - tech savvy, good internet connection, credit card.

So thats like, 80% of the member base here?

Misleading advertising? Sure. Untargetted? No! :)

I would be willing to bet that if they did this on a large enough scale, they would get 2 groups of people:

1. People interested in their product.
2. Webmasters looking to check the members only area for references to their site.

Either way they are paying for access.

Scott

[Yidaki]

related: BLOG links outta nowhere
[webmasterworld.com...]

[panic]

The blogs are now gone!

Apache test pages now replace the "blogs".

-p

[tofinosurfer]

These pages are not gone! The adult webcam link is still there.

For example, look at the bottom of the source code of the "Apache" page at www.a-b-l-o-g.com