Stats Questions

[30SoS]

Hi, all. Nothing pressing here, just wondering about something.

 

In viewing my stats, I like to check out referrer links that are driving people to visit my site. However, I've noticed that a number of these 'referrers' don't have a link to my site -- so how are people getting to my site from there and/or why are they being counted as a referrer?

 

Sorry if this is a silly (or overly newbie) question -- I was just curious. Let me know. Thanks!

 

J

[TCH-Rick]

There could be a search feature on their site and folks are getting to your site via the search.

[DarqFlare]

Technically, the referrer to a website is the last one visited.

 

So if one person visits Site A 30 times in a month and then immediately visits Site B each time afterwards, there will be 30 registered times that Site A referred to Site B.

 

This can obviously be misleading.

[xGrendel]

This happens quite a bit with MovableType users. Essentially what happens, from what I understand in a more simplistic nature, BlogSpammers are using the referral log in hopes to get a better spot in the search engine rankings. In some sordid mess, you end up with bogus hits and referral links to wonderful sites touting male sexual enhancers and Paris Hilton sex videos.

 

I sometimes believe that some miscellaneous bots will crawl and harvest an email address. After harvesting the email address, it will return from it's crawl and store the URL. Then it'll beat the living pulp out of your email inbox and increase your number of craptastic referrals.

 

I hope that makes sense, because I rarely do make sense. It could also be completely untrue and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt...... the TCH SEO may wish to chime in if he/she has any idea'ers.