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Bizarre referers from AOLSearch

         

tedster

10:28 am on Sep 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I started seeing lots of odd stuff in the AOLSearch referer tags lately - apparently keywords, but what can I do with stuff like this:

F389F545566626E1B06C0EEDF77DF68301C7EAF379307BAC
F389F545566626E137FA62D228F1EA75600CDD7F906567A6
F389F545566626E13F414365D880E7C3
89811497D383BFC50FE8D40DD2B625D270D6F4648882F47D
2397903BA4CFFE62095CF1633B80257C

Does anyone know what the story is? I get multiple (6 to 20) hits on each one, plus lots of other similar ones.

<added>
As an amusement, more than a question --
I also get lots of hits from AltaVista that show a keyword of "\".
In fact, for one client, that's almost all they got from AV in August.
</added>

Key_Master

12:31 pm on Sep 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



needlepoint, eh? :)

I'm seeing similiar type referrers. If you decode the strings in hex you get the garbage characters you used to see in AOL referrers. I'm guessing this is just an attempt to make them more presentable.

pixel_juice

12:35 pm on Sep 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



For some reason AOL have started encoded some queries for people connected via AOL. This has been happening for some time -

[webmasterworld.com...]

It seems to be on the increase too...

tedster

2:02 pm on Sep 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Ah, I see. Thanks - that explains the repetition in the strings.

So what's the easiest way for me to convert these from hex to ascii?