Questionable Back Links

[JillJ]

I am getting referrals from places like money-for-placing-articles.com and good-backlinks.com. I am assuming they are selling "good" links but why they would use my site as a back link I don't know. I have pretty sad rankings and I am concerned that these random paid-for links on other's sites might harm me even further. Is this going to be a problem, and if so, what can I do? Thanks!

[NickMNS]

My guess is that these are not actual links but referral spam.

Are you seeing these in Google Analytics?

If so, in the referrals report, add a secondary dimensions, and choose "behaviour" -> Hostname. If the host names shown are not from your domain (either www or non www) then it is referral spam. In which case you can simply ignore them. Referral spam is technique that pings the GA analytics server with your analytics code in order to make fake referrer appear in your stats. No one, bot or human actually go to you server.

You can set up a filter to block this traffic.

[JillJ]

I have clicky.com stats and it shows where they are coming in from. So in other words this is nothing I should worry about? It has just started a few days ago and only a few a day. Thanks for the info!

[NickMNS]

I don't know how clicky.com deals with this. But you should be able to filter out this spam. I checked my analytics without filters and I see the second referrer in my stats. So it is definitely referral spam and you can simply ignore it.

[martinibuster]

I have clicky.com stats and it shows where they are coming in from.

Clicky is not showing where they are coming from. It is only reporting what a browser (or fake browser) communicates to it. A browser can communicate that it came from a totally fake URL and Clicky will report that information. That is what happened.

Those are spoofed referrals. It's a bot communicating to your server that it came from a certain address.

It's like me knocking on your physical door and Clickys asks, "Who is it?" And I say, "Internet Explorer. Jimmy sent me." Then Clicky turns to you and tells you it's Internet Explorer and that Jimmy sent it.

Clicky never reports the actual source of your traffic. Clicky and all analytics packages only report what a browser communicated to it, including any fake information. That's all.

In this case, a bot is telling Clicky that the bot is Internet Explorer (or Chrome or Safari, etc.) and that this browser was sent by such and such website.

That's what spoofing is and that is what a fake referral is. This is nothing new. It has been going on for years and years. Previously it was done for links (because some analytics software publicly displayed referral data) but now it's done to get you to visit their site.

Good luck,
;)

Roger Montti

[JillJ]

Thanks!
Jill

[piatkow]

I have had loads of those, usually showing IP addresses from Russia, Ukraine or Romania. As my site is very UK specific I have had no compunction about blocking those countries' IP ranges which seems to have elimiated most of them.

[NickMNS]

Blocking offenders by ip should have no impact on referral spam, as those ips are not actually going to your server, they are simply sending request directly to the analytics provider's server using your code. In fact there would be no way to know their IP. That is not to say that there are not other forms of spam and bots that are going to your server than can should be blocked.