Why do I see porn sites in my referrers listings??

He has: 5 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

Hello All,

Now I may well be asking a really dumb question here but I have no idea why I appear to be getting single referrals from seemingly random (mostly german) porno sites.

I run a web templates site...its nothing to do with porn and never has been...I really dont get it..

Have a look at the stats page...i put a red dot next to the offending url's..i know its like only a single hit per url but its really annoying me that i dont have a clue why its happening.

Thanks for any advice in advance

Ewan
Secue.com

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

it's called referrer spam, sites cause errors mainly to get listed on your error log as so many hosts allow error logs to be viewed by joe public, if you look at the link they used it would be something like yourplace.som/xyzabcdfkrehte/ or similar

do a search on google for error logs and stuff.
the best thing to do is not make your logs public, password protect them

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

also notice that they all either come from TZZ.DE and BLOGSPOT... it seems someone is doing this on purpose...

chrishirst's picture

He has: 379 posts

Joined: Apr 2005

They certainly do.
There are bots around that can be loaded up with a url list and sent on their merry way.
You'll also find there are a lot of affiliate redirects as well so they get paid when you as a good webmaster visit the referer when checking your logs.
I have a database of them and supply them with a 403 response so my stats don't fill up with the crap. They still appear in the logs but don't mess up my page views.

Chris

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Venue Capacity Monitoring
Code Samples

He has: 5 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

thanks for the replies guys, i'm not entirely sure how to password protect my error logs but i'll look into it.shouldn't be too hard.

Also, i've upated my .htaccess file to block all tzz.de and blogspot.com referrers..as well as the others. I'd sure like to find out which naughty kraut has been spamming my site.

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