Many blog owners, who spend time perusing the Stats "Traffic Sources" display, are finding odd entries there, and are becoming needlessly alarmed. We are seeing several discussions this week, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about mysterious traffic sources.
This misuse of our blogs is not new - spammers have been doing this for years, to trick us into surfing to their websites.
Originally, blog owners who scan their access logs, such as Stats "Traffic Sources", would see an unknown URL, would click on it, would find themselves on a new website - and might become the website's newest customer.
Owners of new websites learned that one way to get initial traffic was to surf to every blog and website that they could find, in hopes that the blog / website owner would check their logs, and would return click to their blog / website. Spammers learned this trick too.
Some blog owners were major contributors to the effect.
Some blog owners, who proudly display the URLs of their referring sources, contributed to the problem which we see now.
The search engines index the access logs published by the blog owners, which contain the compressed URLs such as "bit.ly" and "goo.gl", and link to the actual website published by the porn spammer in question. This leads to search engine indexing of the spammers website.
Recently, spammers developed techniques for automating the surfing.
Instead of actually loading even the main page of our blogs, they simply generate a script which simulates contact with the Blogger servers, and run it from their server, in quantity. Stats records the initial hits, and saves the referer URLs. We look at the Stats displays, and wonder.
Referer spammers may not live in the countries reflected in our logs.
It's even possible that the computers that we see reflected in our logs - Latvia, Poland, and Russia - are being controlled by porn spammers who live in England, Germany, or even the USA. Even spammers don't crap where they live.
Referer spamming involves massive amounts of fake page accesses, against multiple websites. A botnet would be a natural tool, for a project like Referer Spamming.
If you use a product like Google Analytics, you can write a script to filter the odd URLs out of the Analytics displays. You can get the same results with Stats, by ignoring the spam, and working on publicising your blog.
People with blogs with low volume activity will notice the mysterious URLs more, and will worry. People with blogs with high volume activity will recognise the mysterious URLs, will know what they are about, and will go about their business.
If the volume causes unwanted traffic to the Blogger servers, Google Engineers will block what they can. Other than that, don't click on the links, don't publish your access logs or statistics, and get back to work.
What is "goo.gl", and why are they surfing my blog?and
When I clicked on a log entry for "bit.ly", I got linked to a porn site. I don't want my blog associated with porn!
This misuse of our blogs is not new - spammers have been doing this for years, to trick us into surfing to their websites.
Originally, blog owners who scan their access logs, such as Stats "Traffic Sources", would see an unknown URL, would click on it, would find themselves on a new website - and might become the website's newest customer.
Owners of new websites learned that one way to get initial traffic was to surf to every blog and website that they could find, in hopes that the blog / website owner would check their logs, and would return click to their blog / website. Spammers learned this trick too.
Some blog owners were major contributors to the effect.
Some blog owners, who proudly display the URLs of their referring sources, contributed to the problem which we see now.
The search engines index the access logs published by the blog owners, which contain the compressed URLs such as "bit.ly" and "goo.gl", and link to the actual website published by the porn spammer in question. This leads to search engine indexing of the spammers website.
Recently, spammers developed techniques for automating the surfing.
Instead of actually loading even the main page of our blogs, they simply generate a script which simulates contact with the Blogger servers, and run it from their server, in quantity. Stats records the initial hits, and saves the referer URLs. We look at the Stats displays, and wonder.
Referer spammers may not live in the countries reflected in our logs.
It's even possible that the computers that we see reflected in our logs - Latvia, Poland, and Russia - are being controlled by porn spammers who live in England, Germany, or even the USA. Even spammers don't crap where they live.
Referer spamming involves massive amounts of fake page accesses, against multiple websites. A botnet would be a natural tool, for a project like Referer Spamming.
You can filter the spam - just learn to identify, and ignore it.
If you use a product like Google Analytics, you can write a script to filter the odd URLs out of the Analytics displays. You can get the same results with Stats, by ignoring the spam, and working on publicising your blog.
People with blogs with low volume activity will notice the mysterious URLs more, and will worry. People with blogs with high volume activity will recognise the mysterious URLs, will know what they are about, and will go about their business.
If the volume causes unwanted traffic to the Blogger servers, Google Engineers will block what they can. Other than that, don't click on the links, don't publish your access logs or statistics, and get back to work.
Comments
Thanks!
Two questions:
- how do I know if I am publishing my access logs?
- is the "error on page" message i'm getting at the bottom left of my screen at all related to the referer spam?
Thanks again
JK! Thanks, Sandra
http://videogameinspiredfood.blogspot.com/
It is that. And watching the numbers fluctuate, because Google blocks and corrects retroactively, is also depressing. But, everybody has to learn to deal with it - like death and taxes.
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2011/09/referer-spam-war-leads-to-fluctuations.html
Thank you for your info! :(
but luckily I found this, This is really helpful and without it I wouldn't have re-grown my eyes! :3
I just received few traffic sources from strange URLs and was wondering if there is a reason to worry.
I will try to filter them using Google Analytics as you suggested.
I still think there should be a script somehow to block it after you know it is not natural traffic.
There are scripts to block it - they are at the Google level, not the individual blog level.
You have to be patient - Google will detect it, and they will block it - one spammy domain at a time - and for all Blogger blogs.
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/04/referer-spam-cannot-be-blocked.html
Yes, it's annoying. Just try to not blame the victims of the referer spam attacks. Blogger / Google is as much a victim as you are.
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2011/07/referer-spam-is-annoying-and-its.html
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/04/referer-spam-cannot-be-blocked.html
If everyone will use the Send feedback option it may help
You can "block" them - but since they never reach the site in the first place, the block will make no difference.
Thanks for your observations.
Spam has been pissing me off, for years. This is simply one more subject of irritation - in a long life of envy. You can't kill them - there simply are not enough bullets.
Note that Google has no power over 99% of the Internet - it's all that they can do, trying to clean up their 1%. And they cause a lot of pain, with their 1%.