Is There A Purpose To Referer Spam?

We've been experiencing - and discussing - referer spam, since 2011.

We still see unaware blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

When I checked my stats for my blog, and looked at traffic sources, I noticed a link from a different country - and it just seems weird that Russian readers would then go to a US site.

When we explain that they're probably seeing another referer spam attack - and that clicking on the links is not always a good idea, we get a variety of responses. Some want to know if there is a purpose, to this noise.

Referer spam has a variety of purposes - ranging from commercial, to dangerous, to deceptive.

Garbage? Or a purpose?



Here are just 3 examples, from Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

• Advertise any paying customer.
• Lead you to a website with hacking content.
• Attack innocent third parties.

Advertise any paying customer.

This is the commercial possibility. If there's money to be made from publishing informative, interesting, and original content, there is probably lots more money to be made herding innocent third parties to ads on any website needing traffic - and lacking informative, interesting, and original content.

This may even represent a variation of GPT. And with the volume of referer spam that's possible, there are surely enough naive blog owners to make this a very lucrative activity.

Lead you to a website with hacking content.

This is the dangerous possibility. With hacking activity as a possible destination, clicking on a Stats link blindly is like playing "Russian Roulette", with your computer.

And, don't expect the website URL to provide a clue as to the destination. "www.innocous-name.com" could itself be hacked - and might unknowingly serve content from "www.hacking-website.com" - or redirect to "www.hacking-website.com".

Attack innocent third parties.

This is the deceptive possibility.

My blog was a "victim" of referer spam attack, in 2011. I have seen similar referer spam reports, that suggest this is not an unusual use of referer spam.

Protect yourself - if you must investigate your referers.

Surely, there are still actual people surfing - and some referer links are genuine. Eventually, you will want to check out some of the more intriguing URLs, in "Traffic sources".

If you decide to investigate one of the links, copy the text of the link URL - then use a proxy server.

Just don't investigate links, without protection. That's what proxy servers are for.

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Some #Blogger blog owners want to know if referer spam has a purpose - or if it is simply random noise. It actually has a variety of purposes - commercial, dangerous, and deceptive.

Use A Proxy Server, When Following Stats Links

We've been observing the ongoing problem with referer spam since the beginning of the year - yet we see that some blog owners still haven't heard of the problem. Some folks who are advised later, to be more cautious

Don't click on the links!

come back with anxious queries

I already clicked on the link! What will happen now? Have I been hacked?

Here, there's no authoritative answer.

When you click on a Stats traffic source link, and get an eyeful of porn or spam, you're not going to be happy - but hopefully, if your computer is well protected, chances are probably good that you're OK. On the other hand, if this makes you anxious, it would not be a bad idea to get the computer checked out.

In the future, if you must check out your Stats traffic sources, use a proxy server. Again, don't click on the links - copy the URLs, and paste them into the proxy server address window.

If you surf to a referring website and like what you see, then go back, click on the link, and bookmark the URL. Just do this after you screen the traffic source.

If, one day, Blogger uses SafeSearch to screen the URLs, we'll be safe again. And shortly afterwards, referer spam will dry up as the people who pay for spam based advertising stop paying.

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