samporras Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 I was checking my AwStats and I noticed that there is a website that is linking back to mine that I do not recognize. It is bigweblist.com. When I clicked on the link, it was a site for webhosting (not TCH). Is this a problem? I gues what makes me nervous is that I did not request this website to link back to me and for some reason it did. Any suggestions on what I should do? -Sam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 If it is in Links from Other Web Pages, it just shows what pages your visitors are coming from. This does not mean there is a link to your site on the listed page; it just registers where the visitor was coming from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 Actually Rob, the section in AWStats that shows 'Links from an external page' are pages with links back to your site (i.e. backlinks). Samporras: You never have to worry about a negative affect of a site linking to you in regard to the search engines. Only characteristics that you can affect directly will have an affect with the search engines (e.g. content, who you link to, etc.). This makes perfectly good sense in that know one but you should have the 'control' of affecting your site (i.e. as a big 'bad' competitor, I can not get bad neighborhoods to link to you and have a negative affect on your rank. Only if you link to bad neighborhoods will it have a negative affect). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 (edited) Scott, I have some links that defy logic then. Some are from hosting site homepages, some are from sites that have nothing to do with mine or are direct competitors of mine and there are no links on that site anywhere. Where are these links at that AWStats say are there? Edited December 15, 2003 by TCH-Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 Well Rob I do not have an answer. I tried to find the answer but I honestly can not find what 'this' actually is. The side menu calls it 'referring sites', which we would both agree is the page that someone leaves right before entering your page. However, AWStats heading for this report is 'Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines)' which would suggest that these are indeed backlinks. I looked at a couple sites stats and I could only find true backlinks in the report (I did not spend an incredible amount of time on this though). If what you see is true (which I am sure it is), then we should really call this simply 'referring page' which in some cases will be 'real' backlinks but in other instances (e.g. a 'favorites' click) would not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 Scott, I have with both domains links that come from a site I can find no links on. Now my blog site is still getting hits from that issue we were seeing here, http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...5687&hl=awstats. It makes me wonder if some other sites aren't using a technique similar to this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 It makes me wonder if some other sites aren't using a technique similar to this.Very possible, I just went over two more logs more in depth and I am just not seeing this. I have with both domains links that come from a site I can find no links on.Have you ever been to this site that is referencing you? I am checking into something else as well (I'll be back). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 Have you ever been to this site that is referencing you? Only after seeing them in my log. By the way, I dont have a ton, just one or two every month. I dont know if it could be the page before someone came via favorites or what. It isnt a big deal other than I know there are url's in there that have no links to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 16, 2003 Share Posted December 16, 2003 I am checking into something else as well (I'll be back). Well I said I would be back but, I could not confirm what I was thinking, sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samporras Posted December 16, 2003 Author Share Posted December 16, 2003 Thank you both for your information. I freaked out a little bit thinking that there is a certain amount of potential for my site to be associated with or negatively affected by a bad backlink. So what would be the reason for this site linking back to mine? I know my page does not have a particularly high pagerank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted December 16, 2003 Share Posted December 16, 2003 Guys, for what it's worth I also have a report that seems to be links from other sites that certainly don't link to me. In other threads here it has been the consensus that these log entries are caused by a browser picking up a page a visitor is looking at when they type in your address and calling it a referer [sic]. I have seen links that are no way linking to me and then I've seen others that I think may be using a technique like cloaking to link maybe. It's a mystery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greatfolios sysop Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 I have quit putting too much stock in awstats as a hot link'd image from a phpalbum counts as a page hit in awstats eyes even though it is just an image hotlink.... on the other side of the coin, have you ever been searching for something only to find that the top ranked page in google takes you to a site that sells hosting plans? I know I have, I wonder if this has anything to to with that oddity? Good luck! Mr. Bill :Nerd: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 (edited) I have quit putting too much stock in awstats as a hot link'd image from a phpalbum counts as a page hit in awstats eyes even though it is just an image hotlink.... Mr. Bill all log analysis programs count a 'hit' as any file which is downloaded to display a page. Thus, any graphic within a page is considered a hit (10 graphics on one index.html file would be counted as 11 hits). In other words, 'hits' is meaningless. Look at unique visitors and visitors to gain an accurate analysis of traffic to a site. Edited December 17, 2003 by TCH-Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greatfolios sysop Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 Hi Scott, I might still be confused. I was refering to page hits, not just hits.... http://www.greatfolios.com/ftp/tempftp/stats.gif Here is a screen shot of my stats page, see at the top where the album_see.php is, that is a model hotlinking to about 6 different images in her album. I allow models to hot link images from elsewhere in the site and they don't set off the page counters, just the ones in the php album do. I hope I said this right.... BTW Scott: I cant say thank you enough.... Thank you! Mr. BIll :Nerd: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEO Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 I was refering to page hits... Bill, so was I. The phrase 'page hit' has been used for a long time and is quite misleading. A 'page hit' or really a 'hit' consists of a single request from a browser to a server. Thus if a given page has an html file and three gif files then it would require four 'hits' or 'page hits' to display the page. Therefore page hit data can be very misleading. In your example, each time the browser requests an image it is recorded as a 'hit'. I hope that makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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