BLOG links outta nowhere

[TomJones]

I have been monitoring my inbound links, like everyone should. Over the last week, I have found about 8 links from BLOG (weB LOG) sites. I have checked out the sites and all have me listed on their "links" list. I am in precisely the same spot on all the lists (the bottom).

My site has no relavance to any of these sites. Anyone know why they would be linking to me or, how they all have seemed to find me at the same time? I know I should be happy about links, I just don't know why these blog sites are linking to me.

[mack]

Perhaps each of the bloggs are run by the same person.

Mack.

[airpal]

Or perhaps a competitor looking to trip some filter/get you in trouble. Never underestimate the ruthlessness of SEO.

[dirkz]

Could it be that you engaged in some link getting program and your link dealer bought the links mainly from blogs?

[Edouard_H]

I've seen some blog referrals lately in the logs for a few different and unrelated sites. Upon visiting the blogs I find no links to these sites at all - once soon after the visit.

The only common element I've found so far is: <a href="http://www.blog-domain-name.com/webcam/"><img src="/webcam.gif" width="78" height="24" border="0"></a>

[auinfo]

Iv'e found exactly the same when I look at our inbound links, when I visted the sites I can't find a trace of our site?

Can this harm us as we have done nothing to initiate these?

[Goober]

Howdy,

I am also seeing Blog referals. I've NEVER had anything to do with them, and they are not related to any topic on my site.

Goober

[Edouard_H]

The homework has been done on this here [idly.org] - entry for November 14, P**n Sites Hiding Behind Blogs.

[johannamck]

I found a dozen or so referrals from weblogs and other sites (home pages!) that, upon inspection, had no link to my sites.

I did some whois research and found out they were all hosted with a certain company in Illinois that also offers SEO.

I had heard of this kind of log spamming but I was suprised that it would be used to "promote" weblogs. I wonder if the weblog owners know about this.

[TomJones]

That's right on the money, Edouard_H.

The link about the porn site blogs is right on the money. 90% of the offending pornblogs are linking to me. The real question now is: is this harming me? (and why the heck they all decided to link to my fairly new site)

I couldn't really understand the author's reference to the pornblogs trying to get the Google juices flowing. How will outbound links to my site help increase their traffic?

[auinfo]

I don't know if this is related but we have seen that a site (not a blog) linking to us (and many other related sites) is somehow gaining position in Google as it has a cloacked page which is differant to the page indexed by Google. It somehow spits out the results of a meta search into Google and boosts its position.

[Edouard_H]

I've been checking into this sporadically so I don't have the full picture yet and I'm currently pretty puzzled! They seem to be seeking inbound links via stats pages or traffic from curious webmasters; their "Links" are populated by the latest referrers to the offending page. This is either an ill-conceived spam attempt or there is alot more to it than meets the eye.

If you follow the hidden "ad*lt-cam" link on the page you can see the URL of an alleged affiliate program prior to redirection. No whois info available except the host.

[TomJones]

I have every site you list linking to me, auinfo. My stats page is never going to be found by any search engine so, they are wasting their time (if they hope to get rank from my stats pages).

I only see around 20 or so links on each BLOG page. But, judging by the amount of us who are seeing these links, they must have something else going on to spawn the links to so many of our sites. My link is on every BLOG page I have checked. I'm going to disallow my stats folder, just to be safe. If anyone has any suggestions on the best way to handle these porn links, I'm all ears (I just found another 4 fresh new BLOG links tonight).

TJ

[Kenton]

Another interesting note ...

If you type the url in for one of these offending sites your link does not appear at the bottom of the list (notice everyones was at the bottom)

However if you click the link from your stats page your url appears as the last entry on their links list .... tricky eh!

All it does is put the referrers url at the bottom.

Must be some stupid robot hitting stats pages and freaking people out when they click on the link.

My 2c

[Edouard_H]

Here's my current, incomplete, and probably wrong take on this so far: some folks in eastern europe are running a bot of some kind, poorly spoofed as MSIE 6, to spam the logs of many sites with the goal of making $ from an ad*lt affiliate program. Not sure of the mechanics of the final step because the affiliate code doesn't seem to be tripped unless the hidden image link that is on each of these phony blog pages is followed.

Here is another possibility: they hope ultimately to get these pages ranked and receiving traffic then throw the switch so that each visitor goes directly to the p*rn site and have one big pay day knowing full well that it will all blow up.

(enough caffeine for me!)

[auinfo]

Is it harming us ie google thinks we are trying to spam links or something or is it harmless, just getting us to cliock the sites out of curiosity?

[Edouard_H]

I suppose that if your link was on a bunch of them at the same time and googlebot happened to crawl them right then it might be seen as blog spam. In other words, I don't think that's a problem. Don't hit the link from your stats page.

It's a nuisance and I'm curious to see what else might turn up.

[auinfo]

Luckily I'd seen them in our stas but no thought much abbout them. I saw this thread when I was looking at the forum topics and it rang a bell-I won't clicvk on them anymore.

Its weird though,

[Edouard_H]

Though I suppose this thread is somehow related to link development it occurs to me that this forum needs a moderator ;)

[DaveAtIFG]

this forum needs a moderator

I couldn't agree more! But this thread is being carefully watched. It's useful to many and, so far, you folks have done and exceptional job of managing the discussion without straying into "unacceptable" areas. Thanks! :)

[nicebloke]

I think Kenton has described what we've seen happening across 20+ different sites today.

[Edouard_H]

Their log spamming is quite prolific. The motivation is the big question mark. I hate to be so cryptic, but I've made an inquiry with a potentially interested party and to the extent possible I'll share what I learn.

[TomJones]

Darn!

I just realized that clicking on the stats link for the BLOG site will giveaway the location of my stats page! Sometimes I overlook the obvious in a spectacular fashion. I'm going to secure my stats page.

I'm so eager to develop new links that I click gleefully on each new referer. Sucks that these chumps are taking advantage of that fact.

[auinfo]

I'm glad people are noticing this stuff besides us as I'm sure they're(ie the blogs or whatever they are) not doing it for the sake of it.

It confirms my suspiscions that people linking to you (or any site) can influence search engine positions perhaps even at the target sites expense -call me paranoid but this must be happening to thousands and thousands of innocent sites and we just happened to notice something.

[auinfo]

Ahhh..How do you secure the stats page as our is provided by our website host.

[dirkz]

How do you secure the stats page as our is provided by our website host.

If it's not secured by default by your host I would change it asap.

[auinfo]

I have asked our host to see if it can be changed.

I hope that there will be thousands of people doing what we did so hopefully they won't be looking at everyones.

What damage can they do if they look at the stats?

[dirkz]

What damage can they do if they look at the stats?

I would consider my stats as a company secret. You can read there for which keywords you optimized.

From where you get your traffic. How much income you probably have from that site (approximately, if you know the industry).

If I were a (potential) competitor this is enough information to keep me started in no time.

And the last reason why it really should be kept secured by default is this thread :)

[Birdman]

Take a look in your referral stats for 'News' related sites. Same thing there. It took me awhile to figure that out, even after I knew about the fake blog sites. I kept wondering how the heck I was getting hits from 'News' sites.

[hcstudios]

For those of you who have these links in your logs, if you do a Google "similar pages" toolbar search from the page on your website that's linked-to do those blogs or p*rn sites show up in the results? What about in alltheweb.com's clusters when you search on your site name or major keywords?