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08-10-2008, 11:01 PM
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#1 | | Community Manager
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| The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
So I've always seen these url's in my stats, then I would go to the site and never see my link.
Well, I think this is one thing they may have been doing. The mystery of the phantom referring URLs | SEO Shadow
they use a plugin for firefox..  Quote:
This is all managed through a Firefox extension, and a very helpful extension for spammers at that. The execution is simple but brilliant. You define what gets sent to a website in your HTTP Referrer key and this will be logged whenever you visit a page. So if I’m visiting Joe Average’s website and I’ve set my HTTP Referrer to be logged as Com.org - Only the best links ..., the next time Joe Average loads up his web stats, he’s going to have a rather unusual referring URL on display.
The natural reaction will be to click through and see why his site has received a mention. Of course, we didn’t mention Average Joe. We’ve bombed our referring URL on every single page that we’ve visited while using the Firefox extension.
The extension is called RefControl and is available to download freely from the Mozilla website. Once you’ve downloaded the add-on, you’ll notice that several options become available in your RefControl settings.
| Check out the blog post for screenshots and how to use this plugin.. I'm not going to lie and say I'm not going to give it a try, but you might be careful if you do. 
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Last edited by Brandon Sheley; 08-10-2008 at 11:04 PM.
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08-11-2008, 05:20 AM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
Hmmm....very sneaky....I can hear some 'evil scientist' laughs already going on!
Bwahahaha!
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08-11-2008, 06:01 AM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
I've always wondered how they managed that, but I assumed it was some kind of script.
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08-11-2008, 09:40 PM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soliloquy  I've always wondered how they managed that, but I assumed it was some kind of script. | I'm still not sold that the links I would see in my stats were done this way.
I think it would it be an automated script that would run a list of thousands and thousands of URL's 
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08-11-2008, 10:20 PM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
Yeah, this is probably the poor man's version of whatever script that is... visit all those sites yourself!
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08-12-2008, 04:05 AM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
whoa that is interesting and i have def clicked thru what i thought was a referral and nothing was there (at least not my link)
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08-19-2008, 12:00 AM
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#7 | | vBulletin Owner
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
THATS IT! i always get cigarette places referring to my site.. but never a link on it.
Thanks for that!
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08-20-2008, 07:26 AM
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#8 | | Supporters
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
It's called referral spamming. It has been around for a couple years now.
It's never been much of a problem on my personal sites, but some clients have gotten bombarded and noticed the spam links in their webalizer statistics.
I'll admit I've crossed into the darker shade of grey at times when working on ways to promote my sites.
This seems very spammy to me, but I'll try it out. 
-Raymond
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Last edited by popowich; 08-20-2008 at 07:36 AM.
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08-20-2008, 07:44 AM
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#9 | | Supporters
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
You have to disable this plugin while doing link directory submissions.
I tried a couple and they all block the unexpected referrals. (bulk submission protection)
They can't tell the difference.
-Raymond
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08-20-2008, 09:52 AM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
Quote:
Originally Posted by popowich You have to disable this plugin while doing link directory submissions.
I tried a couple and they all block the unexpected referrals. (bulk submission protection)
They can't tell the difference.
-Raymond | ah, thanks for that Raymond 
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09-01-2008, 07:39 AM
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| Re: The mystery of the phantom referring URLs
It also breaks making changes in your admincp and playing ibproarcade games.
Just got back from a vacation... took me a few minutes to remember my last changes. 
-Raymond
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