Question about referring sites

[tama]

My logs show several sites which are sending me a few hundred visitors a week. When I go to the page listed as the referring page, there is no mention of my site on the page or in the source code. Can anyone tell my why my logs show referring pages that do not make mention of my site, let alone link to it?

[stapel]

Without specific information (which I understand you cannot post), there is little way to say anything definitive about what you might be seeing or what might be the cause.

There might be a forum posting which has since been deleted; there might be a blog page which has since been moved "deeper" into the site; there might be a rotating "news" article which has since been archived; or you might be seeing "log file spam".

If the traffic is consistent over the long term, and the referring site seems appropriate, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Eliz.

[Receptional]

Just to to sure the referring site doesn't link to you, try to view the source on that page and then search for part of your domain name. You might be surprised.

[adamas]

Are the ip addresses of those visitors all the same? If so then it could be a bad case of log spam.

[tama]

stapel - what's weird is the referring sites are info product sites so they are really just one page - a sales letter selling their product.

Receptional - I've searched the source code and haven't found any mention of my site - very weird.

adamas - forgive my ignorance - what's log spam?

[stapel]

If the "referring" page is pretty much nothing but an ad, and your site is not referenced anywhere in the page's coding, then your log files are almost certainly being spammed.

I don't know how it's done (I haven't researched this, but I'm sure there's plenty of info available), but the point is that the web-site owner (you, in this case), when going through his logs, sees an interesting in-link. He follows that link backwards and -- bang! -- gets hit with the ad.

You'll soon learn to recognize log spam, and not hit the bait.

Eliz.

[gregbo]

I don't know how it's done (I haven't researched this, but I'm sure there's plenty of info available), but the point is that the web-site owner (you, in this case), when going through his logs, sees an interesting in-link. He follows that link backwards and -- bang! -- gets hit with the ad.

Like most of the ad fraud that's going around these days, it only requires knowledge of the HTTP protocol and how to connect to a web server.

[Moby_Dim]

Nothing too special. This's an easy trick to do using perl lwp, for example. You can use ANY fake referer value while spidering a site.

[ineedmoney]

Do the refering sites use adsense? If you use adwords, these could be clicks from your ads. Maybe not in your case, but perhaps for someone else reading this. I often notice my ads showing up as organic clicks from a site only to find when i view that it was my ad :)

[Moby_Dim]

Forgot to mention yesterday : check IP of the domain the suspicious "referer page" belongs to and compare with the actual log record IP.