Paid for traffic

[MyWifeSays]

I thought I'd give a service a try which supposedly redirects traffic from relevant expired domains to your site.

I however suspect that this is a con because the referrer field is always set to the domain of the company providing the service. However the user host ip addresses are unique.

I've done some research and can't find any type of redirect that results in the referrer being set to the redirecting server. am I correct in saying that it's not possible?

The only thing I can think of is that they are using bots and spoofing ip addresses. Is that possible?

Would there be any way for me to prove that this traffic is not authentic?

[vincevincevince]

It is possible, but to my mind it is unlikely. The only people who could do this are domain registrars. Unless of course these are not actually expired domains.

[MyWifeSays]

Hi vincevincevince

Thanks for replying.

Could you please clarify a bit more?

Which bit is possible but unlikely? The ip spoofing theory?

If you're saying you think the ip spoofing is unlikely then do you think the traffic is legit. and if so how are they setting the referrer?

[Receptional]

If I was setting up this as a service, I would use a service that sniffs out recently expired domain names to buy them up. Then they become mine and so they end up on my server/ip number so that any traffic coming in can be redirected to whichever client I want. In the meantime, any old directory listings continue to send traffic until someone deletes the link.

So I would expect such a service to have all traffic coming from one (or a few) IP numbers myself. But - the domains can't be expired - they must have been bought up. You can check the whois to make sure that the same company is controlling the domains.

Now - whether the traffic would be valuable under that model really depends on who you are and how much you care about building your own brand into something of substance.

[MyWifeSays]

Hi Receptional,

I don't know the domains in question. I doubt there really are any because the referrer is never anything other than the domain of the company offering the service.

This company say they redirect traffic from these expired domains (I presume they mean bought up ones). So I would expect the user host ip address to be the users address even if all the domains were hosted on the same server.

The sequence as I see it would be:

1. User browser requests page on expired domain. The referrer would be either empty if the request was via a bookmark or just from typing in the url in the browser address field. If the request came via a page that contained a link to the expired domain then the browser would set the referrer to the page containing the link.

2. The server hosting the expired domain sends a response back to the browser telling it to try another address (the redirect to my page).

3. The browser request my page, hosted on my server and sets the referrer to the original one (if a 301 or a 302 redirect) or sets it blank (if a meta refresh or javascript redirect is used). The user host ip address would be from the computer with the browser sending the request.

Now the traffic to my site has legitimate looking user host ip addresses but the referrer is always the service providers own domain. I can't see any way they could do this apart from if they are spoofing the ip addresses and originating requests themselves.

It all seems a bit dodgy to me.

[vincevincevince]

MyWifeSays, I think you need to go back to the company providing the service and request more technical details (or otherwise you will initiate a chargeback against them).

When you know more about their claims, post back here so we can comment further on how realistic they sound.

MyWifeAlsoSays it's time for dinner