Referer Spamming – A Link Building Tactic…
And I HATE it!
What is referer spamming anyway?
It’s gonna make webmasters red hot angry as this link building tactic spams your log files with fake referers that links back to the spammer’s website.
Analytics like Webalizer and Awstats that offer public display of stats are its main target – specifically, analytics that rank referer stats. With over thousands of fake hits they send to your website, there’s no way their site wouldn’t rank high in your logs. After ranking in your log, they get an easy free link.
Referer – that’s a single “r” by the way.
Referer spamming is not new at all, it’s been round for ages! It just so happen that the monster bit this lil’ blog. Not an ordinary spammer though, pretty tricky and well planned – although I’m not surprised at all, because spamming has also developed well over the years!
By morning today, I checked my WP stats dashboard for a quick view of my stats. Surprisingly, under the search engine traffic tab, x-rated keywords bombarded me. I checked Google Analytics for a detailed view and have a look on some of my keywords…
What this scum did was to spam me with fake referers from Google. Why? Well, to get my attention. His site (I’m not mentioning it) is on the first page of most these keywords. If he spams thousands of blogs with these then most likely webmasters will check if they actually rank for these keywords. The webmasters would eventually end up to his website if they google for that keyword. Pretty smart eh?
The solution
We don’t want people to mess up with our records, we need it to be as accurate as possible.
So to stop these kind of spam, you will have to add these few lines of code in your .htaccess file…
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?spammerdomain1.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?spammerdomain2.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?spammerdomain3.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?spammerdomain4.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?spammerdomain5.*$
RewriteRule .* – [F,L]
That will give the spammer a forbidden error when visiting with a referer of the listed domains.
In my case however, the spammer faked their referer as Google – obviously I won’t block that! I’d be a pure douche if I did :-)
Here’s the code to block results by their keyword…
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?.*(-|.)?keyword1(-|.).*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?.*(-|.)?keyword2(-|.).*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?.*(-|.)?keyword3(-|.).*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?.*(-|.)?keyword4(-|.).*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?.*(-|.)?keyword5(-|.).*$
RewriteRule .* – [F,L]
Sneaky link building tactic but can be blocked by one click. Bye fake referers!
Update: A guy emailed me asking if faking referer can be done via browsers. Well yes of course, here’s a Firefox plugin called Refcontrol. The risk is up to you ;-)
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14 Comments Add yours
May 10, 2008
2:00 am #comment-1
Thanks for the heads up Carl. This is indeed a very sneaky and underhanded tactic. Thanks for providing this information, as well as the information on what to do about it.
This post has been featured in FullTiltBlogging.com’s Daily Blog Summary today. Great post!
May 10, 2008
12:57 pm #comment-2
Thanks Carl. I’ve implemented this on my old blog, I used to get a lot of those and it really got on my nerves.
May 11, 2008
6:48 pm #comment-3
Hi Carl
Thanks For this! I use to get those for a while but I never thought we could stop it. My review blog of Autopilot Profits has been flooded with these spammers. At least I won’t have to worry about that anymore.
Thanks!
Jameel Mukadam
May 11, 2008
11:28 pm #comment-4
Hi Carl,
RefControl can also generate targeted traffic. I too was a victim a couple of months ago with this Firefox plugin. Some sneaky affiliate programs were introduced by overwriting the referer url of the browser used.
This plugin will not work on popular forum platforms. I tested it
Wyndell
May 12, 2008
9:20 pm #comment-5
Another Great Post like every time carl
Thanks for these lovely posts and i hope we can contact each other
King Regards
Samar Eldin
http://www.samareldin.com
May 13, 2008
12:06 am #comment-6
Hi Carl,
Using RefControl is much less sinister than those used by x-rated guys. When you use this Firefox plugin, you have to do a lot of work, since you have to visit sites one by one.
Yes, it can generate a little traffic and it works.
Wyndell
May 13, 2008
12:35 pm #comment-7
thank carl..ive been searching this for a while…will start implement into my blog right away
Zaiful Zin
May 13, 2008
8:13 pm #comment-8
Wow an xxx sites. Anyway thanks for the codes. That is really helping us a lot into fighting spams.
May 15, 2008
8:11 pm #comment-9
Ah at last codes that will help me to fight back all the spams. Hope this are a great codes for it. Thanks a lot for the codes!
May 31, 2008
1:30 am #comment-10
The same way PR Storm used to work.
June 2, 2008
12:40 am #comment-11
thanks for the great info carl
August 6, 2008
1:36 pm #comment-12
It’s happen to me once. I don’t know what to do, and I ask my friend to clear all the referer. BTW thanks for the tips, finally I know how to do it :D
June 6, 2010
11:46 pm #comment-13
Hehe – ‘cumguzzler’ :)
September 16, 2010
5:21 pm #comment-14
Do you make your log nofollow. ?