Phantom Referrals

"Ghost" referrals from competitors/others

[webdevsf]

Every once in a while, I see a referral in my weblogs from either a competing site or from the front page of a huge site that I know is not linking to us. I assume this is because of a bug in a particular browser in a certain situation.

I can't seem to figure it out. Anyone else have this experience of "phantom" referrals?

[bcc1234]

Sometimes, some browsers set a referrer header as the previous URL even if the user just typed a URL or clicked a bookmark.

[Macguru]

bcc1234 is right, also, anyone can use online or local tools to analyse your website. This can leave "Ghost" referrals or funny user agents. It is normal when you have active competitors.

[hakre]

that seem to be bump competitors then, if they can be analyzed that easily... ;)

[Grumpus]

I also think this is starting to become a new means of advertising on the web. I get these from time to time with the referal being some site that has something that would be of interest to webmasters. SEO sites, link track software, etc. etc. I guess the theory is that the webmaster sees their stats, says, "What's this?" and goes and looks.

G.

[bcc1234]

I also think this is starting to become a new means of advertising on the web.

Oh YEAH!
I tried that once - started htting the sites with a bot and a referrer was a url to my site with a password protected directory. And the name of the realm was something like "Affiliate Review Editor Staff" (or something like that).

I had a lot of affiliates signed up during the week after that :) None of them did any good though.