I just wanted to write a short note about how much referrer spam hits my website.

black_hat_fekete_kalapWhat is referrer spam? My access log is not public. When checking my access log I see visits coming from variuos websites as referrers, but these websites turn out to cointain nothing about my website. So I as a webmaster was practically lured to look at a website.

So I deployed a script that reads the referring address and looks for a link to my website (which would explain the referrer). I obviously had to whitelist some domains like known search engines, webmail providers and a few private forums I know my website might get mentioned in.

Here’s what I found after a special SELECT in my log:

count of spammy visits = 265
from unique web addresses (claimed by the visitor) = 116
(I leave out the addresses for obvious reasons)
from these tld’s (claimed by the visitor): ru (41), com (40), net (9), org (8), ua (3), biz (2), tv (2), su (2), xn--p1ai (1), guru (1), in (1), au (1), ae (1), uk (1), it (1), info (1), ro (1)

Each and every black hat practice makes me sad :(

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