Got Question About Stats

[YMe369]

Hi, i was wondering if anyone can clear this up for me:

Every month when i look in my stats, at the "Connect to site from" @ "Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines)" section

it said

- http://www.hostitcheap.com

and now these:

- http://www.makeindex.com

- http://www.netfactual.com/survey/

 

Here's the (kind of) problem:

I have never heard of any of these sites, and it seems, that makeindex/hostitcheap is the same site, and seems to be a hosting-company.

 

And on their site I cant find my address anywhere, i wonder how or where its linked from.

[Deverill]

Someone recently explained it to me that some systems don't play nice and those may simply be pages that a guy was looking at and when he went to your site it used that address as the referer. Take this for what it's worth as I can't quote sources or anything but it kinda makes sense.

[vendlus]

Yeah, could it be something as simple as someone has one of those sites as their homepage and then when they go to your site, the browser is simply using it as the referer since they haven't been anywhere else??

[TCH-JimE]

Hi,

 

I think Jim has hit on it here. I know I get some very very very wierd ones which I know my site has no connection too

 

Jim

[DarqFlare]

Here's the jist of it:

 

A website is considered a referrer if it was the last website visited before the user went to your site, generally. Most of the time, IE is stupid and it will record a referrer, even if the user was at www.yahoo.com and went to your website through favorites. As a result, www.yahoo.com is the referrer, despite no link being clicked.

 

Some people can even set the referrer in their browser, which I have experienced (One of my referrers was "Running to hide!").

[Jimmy Legs]

i do know netfactual goes through sites for some kind of data gathering service. and i suspect sites like hostitcheap purposefully set things up so people will see them in the referrer log, visit the site and presumably be so impressed with their hosting plans they sign up immediately. an interesting marketing plan, if not a very effective one.