AwStats showing links that I cannot find...

[solid7]

In AwStats, I am constantly finding a link to my website from this URL:

http://www.bwdow.com/newsites.php

However, when I go to that site, I cannot find it anywhere!

What's going on? I never asked this site for a link, and I'm not doing any sort of PPC advertising right now.

[bugon]

In AwStats, I am constantly finding a link to my website from this URL:

http://www.bwdow.com/newsites.php

However, when I go to that site, I cannot find it anywhere!

What's going on? I never asked this site for a link, and I'm not doing any sort of PPC advertising right now.

It's a dynamic page, perhaps your link is not "generated" every time.

[solid7]

I've been seeing this show up for about a year. Although it may be dynamically generated, it must only show my site when I'm not looking. It's the beginning of the month, and I track my stats daily. I have never seen it, and the featured sites are the same for days or weeks on end.

Is there a tool to find out if a link really exists on a certain site? Surely there must be, for webmasters checking reciprocal links?

[rosiee007]

are you running adwords for your site ?

[Smyrl]

You may be seeing referrer spam. There are programs spammers use to spam your stats. If this is what is happening block the referrer using .htaccess file.

[e10]

Hi Smyrl,

You know, I am really glad you said that because I have heard about spamming the stats before but I just don't get it. What is the point? What and who would have any reason to spam stats?

[solid7]

I have heard about spamming the stats before but I just don't get it. What is the point? What and who would have any reason to spam stats?

Right. I second that question - and to take it one step further - how in the hell do they do it?

[Smyrl]

I just don't get it. What is the point? What and who would have any reason to spam stats?

It makes absolutely no sense to me but a few people make their stats public. Seems it is all about backlinks. Porn, loan, pharmeseuticals are the worst. I understand p r s t o r m is one such program they use. If you are running some of the easily spammed programs, I believe it helps to change folder and file names. It has been three years since I ran phpbb on a site until it started being spammed. I still see people trying to connect to files and folders associated with it. Files and folders do not exist.

Good luck in guarding your hen houses. The foxes are always lurking.

[solid7]

I am still unsure of how or why this is occurring, but in the process of investigating, I turned up several sites that were hotlinking to me.

I have corrected this, and hopefully, that will solve my problem. I don't think this was the case on the site in question, as the hits were shown as a link from a search engine, whereas the hotlinks all appear to be robot/spider hits.

I thank everyone for the advice thusfar, and if anyone can shed any further light on the matter, please speak up!

Thank you.

[Smyrl]

Oh you can block hotlinking in your .htaccess file if you are on an Apache server.

[solid7]

Yep, that's what I done....

[Jean-Luc]

I am still unsure of how or why this is occurring, but in the process of investigating, I turned up several sites that were hotlinking to me.

I have corrected this, and hopefully, that will solve my problem. I don't think this was the case on the site in question, as the hits were shown as a link from a search engine, whereas the hotlinks all appear to be robot/spider hits.What do you call "hotlink" ?

A "hotlink" is usually an image from your site that is displayed in a page from another site. To detect these hotlinks, you need the referrer, but most robots and spiders do not provide a referrer. How do you determine that hotlinks are robots hits ?

On the other hand, it is common that search engines provide cached-versions of your pages : these are hotlinks. On top of that, they display images as search results in their own pages : these are also hotlinks.

Jean-Luc

[elusid]

always wanted to know the purpose of referal spam myself.. so seems pointless ...