Forum Moderators: phranque
Ive just got a weird refer in my stats logs, and I was hoping some people here could help me understand it.
Firstly it's from a hardcore porn site (my site is career related).
I checked the code of the refering site and found this (tidied up and specifics removed):
><A HREF="https://www.ownerofpornsite.com/wid=7196&cpid=3&owid=7196&cep=59&sid=1¬r=0&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fstats.mysite.com%3A8484%2Fstats%3Ftype%3Dreport%26report%3Dreferring_urls%26order%3Dnew%26filter%3D&v=1&counted=1" ONCLICK="clicked=true;">This URL leads right tomy refering URL's page in my stats (well, the real one does, ive changed this one).
Firstly I thought that this was a webmaster with limited knowledge of search engines thinking he could either:
a) Get my site penalised
or
b) Boost his own sites ranking
Code like this appears on the few public pages I checked of the site.
But looking at it again, there seem to be field variables in there, so a thought occured to me.
Clearly is this designed to only appear in my logs, as there are no notable or usable links on the porn site to mine.
So, could this be a subtle marketing attempt?
Is it possible that where www.mysite.com appears, that tommorow www.yoursite.com could be? (ie, the URL is generated for xxx period of time in order to turn up referals on a particular websites logs).
I would assume that the major customer of online porn is an IT literate male for spends a lot of time at a computer, so webmasters would make a logical target.
Should I be worried about this? I assume that it can't negatively effect my site.
Is there a technical advantage (or even a point) to doing this that I probably dont get?
Any thoughts?
Cheers
Scott :)
(ps, the domain is a fairly common term, so would most likely be worth a lot of cash, so I don't think it could be a throwaway attempt to "get" me!)
This is a very well know a dodgy technique that certain unscropulus (sp?) sites use. What they hope is that you logs are avaliable to public viewing and that the search engines index them. If this is the case then they have gained a link to their site from yours.
Just make sure that you logs are not publically viewable and you won't have a problem.
Chris
