16 September 2013

Refferer Spam Blacklist & How to Deal with It

Monday, September 16, 2013
Okay. When you have landed on this post, you probably have the same problem with me. 

Last night, I just decided to start blogging again after a long time and the next day... the very first thing that I saw is something odd in my blog stats. The new post that I published had received several visits from a certain referrer site, which I won't name here.

Anyway, since the nature of its name and the high frequency of occurrence on my blog made me feel uneasy... I decided to do some research on Google about it...and, voila... The results were nothing that I hoped for.

This so called site appeared in many articles that called it as a "refferer spam". From what I have read, I came to the conclusion that in the case of blogging, this term basically describes an act that gives you the impression of an amount of visits to your blog that are actually not present. These refferer spammers might have a link occurring in your blog stats that you better just ignore. Don't click it out of curiosity.

Here's a good advice that is supported by other statements on the internet, especially if you are using the Blogger platform:

Use Google Analytics instead of Blogger Stats. Blogger Stats isn’t an accurate count of your blog stats, it includes visits from bots such as those that crawl your site to create an index for search engines, spam bots and other automated programs. ~Source: http://xomisse.com/blog/prevent-referrer-spam-links

After reading this I checked my blog's Google Analytics dashboard about incoming traffic sources, and thankfully there were really no signs of the same refferer spam. Webmaster Tools also didn't state anything about recent critical issues. Hopefully it stays this way and the problem will resolve by itself. That's why for now I consider this case closed. Remember: Avoid clicking on any spam links.




Music is expression of harmony in sound.
Love is the expression of harmony in life
~Stephen F. Gaskin
Keep a song in your heart.

2 appreciated note(s):

wenn said...

thanks for the info..

Waileng Tan said...

Oh dear, I didn't now about this until you shared it! I've learned something today. Thank you for sharing. Anyway, welcome back to the blog-sphere!