Log File URL Drops - stuffs up my stats

[Harry]

If people talk about spam, well, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest culprits are those sent to Webmasters using stats. A few annoying ones even sell the software to others.

I hate those and immediately ban any Web site that uses this practice. But lo and behold, just like email spammers, they survive like the cockroaches they are by switching ISP.

Now I'm pissed off. And the worst thing is that I'm sure those cockroaches are members of WebmasterWorld.

Darn.

Is there a way to prevent such fake hits?

[Brett_Tabke]

First, considering the millions upon millions of page views this site does a month, it is a pretty safe bet that every webmaster vists here at least once a month.

Second, log stuffing or log url dropping is pretty common. We get between 100 and 500 unique ip log url drops here a day. In the grand scheme of things, it is a non factor.

Many sites that have a issue with it, often have poor security. It doesn't take a long look through a search engine to find sites that have open logs. This invites log drops.

Good logging software is able to flag off these types of hits and block them from showing in any stats.

If it is a continuous issue, then use a htaccess file to ban the ip.