RANDOM referrals

what are they

[Powdork]

<http://random.yahoo.com/> is the referrer
</bin/ryl> is the search string

what is this when it shows up in your referrer. Is yahoo sending surfers to random site? Clicking on the search string produces a different (random) site every time.

[EBear]

Yes, it's just a link from yahoo to a random site from their db. It used to be a popular addition to a lot of home pages on the early web and I seem to remember it featuring at the top of Yahoo's home page. More on it here: [uk.docs.yahoo.com...]

[I just checked the Wayback Machine. It seems to have disappeared from their home page at the end of '98.]

[mack]

If they where to re-introduce it, it may offer back some of the value of a yahoo directory listing!

The sheer unmber of page views on the Y! homepage would be sure to create page views for all sites listed.

I guess then removed it to reserve system resources, or to prevent embarasment. If you click it a few times you are sure to find a 404.