The mystery of the phantom referring URLs

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-10-2008, 10:01 PM

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.

**ArnyVee** · 08-11-2008, 04:20 AM

Hmmm....very sneaky....I can hear some 'evil scientist' laughs already going on!

Bwahahaha!

**Soliloquy** · 08-11-2008, 05:01 AM

I've always wondered how they managed that, but I assumed it was some kind of script.

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-11-2008, 08:40 PM

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

**Soliloquy** · 08-11-2008, 09:20 PM

Yeah, this is probably the poor man's version of whatever script that is... visit all those sites yourself!

**Caddyman** · 08-12-2008, 03:05 AM

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)

**BWorld** · 08-18-2008, 11:00 PM

THATS IT! i always get cigarette places referring to my site.. but never a link on it.
Thanks for that!

**popowich** · 08-20-2008, 06:26 AM

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

**popowich** · 08-20-2008, 06:44 AM

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

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-20-2008, 08:52 AM

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

**popowich** · 09-01-2008, 06:39 AM

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