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It's similar to guestbook spamming, but sneakier and it doesn't involve guestbooks.
First of all, it's very helpful to have a domain-with-important-keywords-in-the-url.com.
This technique involves a certain very popular statistics program (and perhaps more than one.) Here's how it works:
Find a high-PR site that uses this stats program. Determine whether the statistics are publicly available (and thus subject to being crawled by Googlebot). Also assure that the monthly stats reports have PR. Install a link to that site's index page on your most important page. Click that link a sufficient number of times (or use an automated way to do it) so that your URL is assured of being displayed as one of the top 30 referrers when the current month's stats are published at that site on the first of the next month. Googlebot then crawls that stats report page, finds your domain-with-important-keywords-in-the-url.com and not only sends some PR your way but also tallies the keywords for relevancy.
I spent some hours researching some things this evening and stumbled across this technique. Believe me, it works.
You can prove this to your own satisfaction by noting the keyword-laden-adult-site-urls.com's amongst the top referrers to very unrelated websites. Go to those adult sites, check their backlinks and also note their ranking on Google.
GoogleGuy, are you taking notes?
If anyone wants the name of the stats program, just sticky me.
I think that since most SEO guys already used to backlinks, even if google stop listing them, someone will easily write a script to show them.
Just my two cents.
Wjy spend so much time trying to get into someelses log files when you could be using that time to do something useful.
I do, however, run a few domains on subjects that very people would even know to do searches on. Occasionally, when doing very specific research online, I'll use a program to fake my referring headers ( and other information ) which inserts a specific referral link back to an informational page specially designed for this purpose ( orphaned page ). This is just a note to anyone studying the logs ( not public ).
It's done in an ethical way, is on-theme and generates a bit of targeted traffic. I even invite website owners to email me for a correction to their own referral logs ( although nobody has ever emailed me asking me to provide the authentic referral info! ).
I only use this method, however, with informational websites working on non-profitable projects.
I do find it interesting to see how many webmasters these days actually do check their logs, and I enjoy watching these types of referrals to see where interest is generated. After all, when they land on my entrance page, I know quite abit of information about them already.
*Dont try this at home kids
GG
vitaplease, maybe we'll stop listing it in the backlinks altogether. That would help put peoples' minds at ease, I guess.
Giving the GG a standing ovation. It would also take a lot of SPAM out and perhaps make google’s employees lives a little easier. Jeeze, the stories about that abuse are endless.
I regularly go looking at other peoples - a lot of the time you take a URL, put "/sitestats" at the end of it and you're in. Can provide useful information as to the best referrers.
Is this just ignorance do you think?
TJ
i guess that's one reason for making stats public.
I'm not with you - can you explain what you mean?
TJ
But if as GG says, it doesn't work, then we've managed to distract a whole bunch of spammers from doing stuff that might have a real impact ;)
That's a Big If
You might also want to consider the fact that it is in Google's self-interest to convince as many people as possible that it doesn't work.
Surely googleguy and google will see it,
and that route will be eventually not work!
Which beg's the question...
How can we exploit things as long as possible without
people like googleguy spoiling the fun?
No-one has actually answered my question as to why they leave their stats open to be viewed by the public in the first place though?
TJ
Personally I think it's much better to have these things out in the open. That way they get rectified.
Spoil Sport. ;-)
No-one has actually answered my question as to why they leave their stats open to be viewed by the public in the first place though?
Jesus christ, by the fact no-one has replied
should clearly give you the answer.
PEOPLE ARE LAZY.
It's all about human nature.. the real question
is how can google crawl web - stats, if the URL is not public?
I can see how you can easily find stats pages. ;-)
Threads like this are getting ridiculous.
This stuff has been around for a long time.
So has guestbooks.
If people would take the time to research the stuff - they would see google has stated they aren't counting these backlinks.
Then again - if people took the time to research this stuff - they wouldn't need to whine and complain here - as they could actually rank well in the SERPS.
WG may be right - that isn't what I am talking about.
Go back to using everyones favorite SEO technique:
[google.com...]
Now what do we have - dozens of PhDs working on invisible text filters [that never was a problem] so webmasters can sleep at night feeling that everything is fair.
Now google is going to probably spend time in removing the guestbook & log entry backlinks - so webmasters stop their whining.
All this does is waste google's time. Why do you think they have the submit url page? So they don't have to answer emails about it. Same with the invisible text filter.
There will always be something to whine about. There will always be people doing whatever they can to get ahead. As long as there are billions of webpages out there - and money to be made - there will be "spam".
The spammers are getting better and better - the good spam doesn't look like spam - will steal your sales - and there is nothing you can do about it - cause it doesn't break any of the rules.
Guess what? The whiners and complainers will have rock solid good converting pages out there that beat them - and there will be nothing you can do about it.
Hi guys, just joined after lurking here for a long time.
I also would like to tell Beachboy and others who are discussing this kind of hole up in the open that the last time I found one such hole in Google, that was back in March 2001, I immediately launched a site to exploit said hole.
The result?
It was banned!
But only in January 2003!
Which translated to a brand new Corvette and a trip to Europe for 1 month, all paid with Google's hole.
So if you didn't have a reason for keeping quiet about this kind of thing, there you go!
LOL - He found a new bug and rushed to tell Googleguy, which shows you're a nice person too but if Googleguy knew how to make $$$ from such knowledge he probably would too Beachboy!
It's not ugly to make money from your research boy! Now wait till you discover the next one, cuz this one is out there for the spammers to beat you now.
I just think there are youngsters on this biz that need to learn capitalism before rushing to tell their competition of their new techniques.
Long live this forum, thank you for such an informational resource.
Hey, mine too ;)
But are YOU bringing in a sallary in the low six figures?
By the way, my vette was the U$ 52.000,00 model, convertible with optionals. Trip to europe was U$ 2700,00 only, stayed in cheap places.
Still have U$ 4000 to play with from the last Google trick I kept quiet.
>doesn't need to capitalize on this or any other technique
But I thought YOU would like to capitalize on this! I surely know what Google is making in terms of $.
If you don't want the cash then nevermind please, just ignore my post.
Sure, some of them are "borderline", but we're not running a church here or moral police, where running an SEO board.
Thanks for the tip BeachBoy.
trillianjedi, Most of the people publish their logs to brag about their traffic to the potential banner advertisers. Maybe this thread will make them removing the logs from public folders.
