Smarter referrer spam?

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April 6, 2004

Ugh more referrer spam innovation. Check out these sites [1] [2].

Notice this bit over at both sites, where there is a link back to this website:

If your just looking to relax take a look here. It’s a good site and recommended.

Just a hyperlink pointing to the referrer, so it seems an innocuous enough (and legitimate) backlink. What’s more, the style is randomized, so if you refresh the page, you get a different-looking site.

Blocked with mod_rewrite in my .htaccess

Posted by Chu Yeow at April 6, 2004 SGT |

Permalink |

| Category: Blogging

5 Comments & TrackBacks (Add yours)

The paper doll icon that precedes each comment is an idea conceived by Vanessa Tan.

I am not really understanding how that spam helps them at all. I am guessing Google will pick up the link and assign it PR? What’s the point of their spamming this way?

Posted by: Stephan Segraves on April 6, 2004 1am

Indeed, google will rate domains higher when it finds more links to and from it to other sites. By making sure their links appear on this site, their page rank will increase (weither it’s by appearing in the refer list, or in the comments), and for now, most of these sites are ‘almost empty and mostly, complete nonsense’.

Now, after some time, when the page rank is sufficient, the domain changes its content to something else, like a marketing/advertising site, an adult site, .. Since it has a high page rank, they hope to attract more visitors.

Posted by: Philip Luppens on April 6, 2004 5pm

Indeed, Philip.

Hmm… The webmaster of Vault52, are you? I like what you’ve done there! Big Fallout fan here.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on April 6, 2004 7pm

Damn, I knew I should have used an alias - now V52 will show up as ‘linked in a Referrer Spam Blog’ in Google ;)

[off topic]
I’m honoured you like V52 - although I must admit I’m not working on it for the moment (working on a brand new project called ‘vault0′ (mfrpg - multiplayer forum rpg - if such a thing exists). It’s an attempt to create an asynchronous ‘fallout web-world’, with npc’s, items, combat, shops, .. (hmm, I’m not making much sense here, do I ?)).
[/off topic]

Back on topic: I really enjoy your blog. I’ve read it many times (coming from javablogs.com), and it made me switch to mozilla permanently. Great style, very readable, etc .. a LOT of people can learn from this. Keep up the great work !

Posted by: Philip Luppens on April 6, 2004 8pm

On your vault0 idea, I think I understand what you’re trying to do, and I think it sounds rather cool too. Been looking around that forum and V52 for an “About” page or and FAQ - could you point me to one?

Oh, and I thought you’d probably want to know (if you don’t already) that your registration page is broken - missing page maybe?

And thanks for your compliments! That’s really cool that you like it, even cooler that I converted you to Mozilla (I did, right? Hmm, I wonder how many I’ve converted, if any besides you, with my ramblings).