website under attack

[cazgh]

Since yesterday my website WebmasterWorldidgets.co.uk has been receiving requests from various IP addresses every minute - calling up the files from the first page, nut showing visits of 6 seconds. (an extra 850 unique visitors yesterday)

Every now and then a link from

www.widgets.com/redirct.htm?url=http://wwWebmasterWorldidgets.co.uk

shows in my referer logs and I'm starting to think that this is a deliberate attempt to hurt my sites search engine positioning.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Cheers!

[edited by: engine at 10:48 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2003]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[topr8]

whatever they are up to, i don't thing damaging your position in the SERPS is what they are doing.

[Imaster]

Consider yourself lucky. Your site is getting noticed ;)

[cazgh]

LOL!

i dont understand why though?

[cazgh]

hi again,

I contacted the SEO company who were forwarding links on to my site and received this response:

"Hi, there is a traffic delivery campaign for your domain currently underway. I believe one of my
advertisers put this through as I do remember approving this campaign a short time ago.

All traffic originates from my networks which is why you see it coming from promotiongarage. It is how we control delivery for the various campaigns while keeping the publisher (sites on the network displaying your site) information private.

Regards,
Randy"

any ideas why?

[topr8]

well its not beyond the possibility that its a bit of a scam to get you to buy advertising, after all why would someone else pay to give you traffic.

[DaveN]

Sounds like a scam to me they are most probably sending you a load of pre generated traffic

Dave

[cazgh]

Not sure what pregenerated means - but they call up approximately half of my index page content - but dont view the page.

I have managed to get the campaign to stop - it was all traffic from this SEO website - however they can't or won't give me any information about the reseller the campaign was ordered through, or the client ordering the campaign.

The damage has already been done to my average time on the site figures etc - SEO listings seem to be as they were before.

Thanks for your comments and help ;-)

[ukgimp]

>>The damage has already been done

No real damage, only a slight sqew in the data, which you know about so can account for.

>>pre generated traffic

Here is how I see it. If I send loads of what looks like normal visitors to your site but actually it is my script then an unsuspecting person may be duped into paying for that traffic.

Trust very few people :)

[cazgh]

I think I'm alright with the 'trust very few people' - Im definately one of the most paranoid people I know!

Cheers again...

caz

;-)

[Receptional]

We have found similar things over the last few days, with three or four sites sending abnormal traffic patterns. One of the sites does not even appear complete and it is impossible to actually get results from a manual search on their "search" site.

We are assuming that they are partnering with a PPC provider but they must be mingling results so that it isn't clear which one is giving us s*&t traffic. I will therefore have to gio through every PPC provider and see where a spike arises and go complian. The problem is that is they are careful, the spike may not be obvious.

What I don't understand is how the referring URL is as you describe site.com/redirect=myurl.com as this wouldn't track back to an espotting type provider, but I bet there's some techie way to hide or disguise the referrer...?

I suspect we are being scammed, and you can bet that the scammer is in this forum. Check your previously trusted PPC traffic.

[panic]

There are ways you can spoof the http_referer.

First, telnet to domain.com at port 80. Then GET the index page. Next, type "Referer : [spoofedreferer.com",...] and there you go. It should show up in the access logs :P

-panic

[Fiver]

hmm, I guess it would be possible to affect a sites relationship with google if you did one of these DOS attacks just as they were being crawled. Fortunately I guess it's fairly impossible to tell when that is from the outside.

[cazgh]

Hi - the original reply from the SEO company did state:

"Hi Caroline, there is a traffic delivery campaign for mydomain.co.uk currently underway. I believe one of my advertisers put this through as I do remember approving this campaign a short time ago....

All traffic originates from my networks which is why you see it coming from promotiongarage. It is how we control delivery for the various campaigns while keeping the publisher (sites on the network displaying your site )information private."

Im guessing they definately do something to conceal the true referer - most of the time the redirect from the SEO didnt show - just for some reason, once every 100 or so hits it did!

Caz

[StanBo]

Then it's almost the safe bet that they either direct porn traffic to you or it ain't no traffic at all - merely a script with no visitors to back the figures up. If I were you, I would have confronted the company with an alternative:
Either they let you see what do you waist your bandwidth for, or
You block them with htaccess and make them known all through webmaster community that they are SCAM.

[panic]

I'm not a legal expert or anything, but you could threaten them with a lawsuit if they don't stop.

-panic

[cazgh]

just greatful its all over!

definately worthless traffic though - not one extra e-mail!

you'd be peeved if you paid for it

;-)

[cazgh]

i have to admit I almost did threaten legal action - i threatened to take it further but didnt specify how exactly!

*blush*

[topr8]

>>>i have to admit I almost did threaten legal action

the thing about legal action is that it is very expensive, really imo its a rich man's toy. other companies know this too, so even a couple of letters can cost you dear with no result.

[ITcameleon]

IMHO you have to be aware some companies have lawyers they work very closely with or offer their services in barter so legal action can be inexpensive for them ;-)
Cheers!

[panic]

When companies are sending shady traffic to your site, they're usually small companies. Usually, they'll have like one or two "employees" at the most, just looking to make a quick buck on the side. Needless to say, these people don't have lawyers :P

-panic

[cazgh]

thank you everyone!

;)

[ITcameleon]

Panic - that's why those companies should fear legal action. How can they hnow if you have a good lawyer or are just pretending you do? Hmm?
Cheers!
P.S. One more thing to do - this may also work - submit a spam report to their ISP and place them in the CC ;-)