Strange Search Hits

[cheapwebsolutions]

I have a youth sport website that I just noticed has 25% of it's hits from people searching "free porno". How do I even go about researching this? I can't find my site by typing that in. I've searched my site and can't find that wording. I'm a little worried that someone may have uploaded something to the site, but I kind of doubt it.

 

Hopefully it's just some a-hole playing games with using my url in their link.

 

Any suggestions?

[owatagal]

Start with the site's raw logs -- if you log into CPanel, there's an easy "Raw Log Access" (or similar) icon you can click and then download the logs. Unzip them and open them in TextEdit, Notepad, or similar. Depending on how large they are, it can take some time for your program to open them.

 

Then use the Find/Search function in your program and look for "porno." You can look at each individual log entry to determine the full URL of the referring site (useful because Awstats cuts off query strings) as well as which page on your site the link led to--main page, sub page, etc. You'll also get the IP address of the visitor, which might or might not be useful.

 

That should help you figure out if it's something on your site (since you can check the exact pages people see when they click the link) or if it's someone doing something goofy with the URL (with the full URL--including query string--you should be able to go straight to the site that links to you and see why your site is listed on that page.

Edited July 26, 2006 by owatagal

[cheapwebsolutions]

Thanks. People found a buried PHPBB forum that is no longer used and were loading it up with BS profiles with porno links in it. I'm deleting the whole thing. Thanks for your help. It was right on the money.

 

 

 

Start with the site's raw logs -- if you log into CPanel, there's an easy "Raw Log Access" (or similar) icon you can click and then download the logs. Unzip them and open them in TextEdit, Notepad, or similar. Depending on how large they are, it can take some time for your program to open them.

 

Then use the Find/Search function in your program and look for "porno." You can look at each individual log entry to determine the full URL of the referring site (useful because Awstats cuts off query strings) as well as which page on your site the link led to--main page, sub page, etc. You'll also get the IP address of the visitor, which might or might not be useful.

 

That should help you figure out if it's something on your site (since you can check the exact pages people see when they click the link) or if it's someone doing something goofy with the URL (with the full URL--including query string--you should be able to go straight to the site that links to you and see why your site is listed on that page.

[TCH-Bruce]

Thanks. People found a buried PHPBB forum that is no longer used and were loading it up with BS profiles with porno links in it. I'm deleting the whole thing. Thanks for your help. It was right on the money.

This should serve as a reminder to others. If you installed something through cPanel or manually and are no longer using it make sure it is deleted from your account. And be sure to remove the associated database if it has one.