Is referrer spoofing the same as log spamming?

[SlowMove]

I've seen sites listed under referrers in my stats program, and when I check to see if they're linking to my site, there is no link. Of course, they're just spidering. Is this a form of log spamming and does anyone know how it's done?

[Dreamquick]

I'd call it a form of log spamming since they are inserting inaccurate data to promote themselves.

In my personal experience most of the crawlers that referrer spam are either from totally unknown search engines which never seem to supply me with any traffic or from businesses who are actually just collecting data on websites / webservers / domains and reselling it for profit.

How's it done? Well once you reach a point where your programming language of choice can retrieve a webpage for you, making it supply extra headers with the request is normally childs play. You'd just define the header name ("referer") and then set its value to whatever you want and you're done.

- Tony

[Kwix]

I have noticed harvesters that will grab a referrer use it for 10 pages or so, then switch the referrer to the last page it harvested. 10 more pages, switch. I think this may be an attempt to avoid automated spider blockers.

[bakedjake]

You'd just define the header name ("referer") and then set its value to whatever you want and you're done.

It's also helpful to use anonymous proxies, random time requests, and a nice list of user-agents to make the traffic look a little more "real".

Easy as cake, though.

[digitalv]

SlowMove,

There are a couple of "legit" reasons for referrer discrepencies. One of them are PPC advertisements, which may exist at the time the user clicked but don't happen to show up at the time YOU clicked. Also forums/comments/guest books/etc. where the post was deleted before you happened to look.

Another reason ... plain old fashioned referrer blocking/tampering for the sake of "Privacy". Some programs block the referrer. Others change it to something else.

[macrost]

lol @ jake! ;-)