As it approaches the end of the month, I like to look at my top Search referral Terms. In May, these were the top Search Keyphrases referrals :
myspace tools 261 4.8 %
netconcepts 140 2.6 %
black hat seo 105 1.9 %
seoblackhat 89 1.6 %
seo blackhat 82 1.5 %
horse sex 81 1.5 %
rssgm 79 1.4 %
blackhat seo 76 1.4 %
small penis 52 0.9 %
sex stories 47 0.8 %
Aside from the usual humorous suspects, I Noticed “netconcepts” coming in 2nd. That’s funny because before this post I never mentioned that word. Moreover, as of this writing, I’m not in the top 10 in MSN, Yahoo, or Google for this arcane term. So how did netconcepts get into my log? It seems like it was because of a new twist on the old trick of referral spam.
What is referral Spam?
Referral Spam is sending multiple requests to a website spoofing the header to make it look like you are sending real traffic to another site. This way, when someone checks their log, they will see 100 or 5,000 or however-many “referrals” from another site that actually sent them no real traffic. Often, you don’t even have a link to the target site from on page of the sending URL you are referral spamming from. By refferral spamming, you will get the clicks from the curious refferral log browsers as well as traffic from the toplists you dominate.
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What is the Netconcepts Twist on Referral Spam?
In the case of Netconcepts, instead of putting netsoncepts.com or netconcepts.co.za as the rereferring URL in their referral spam, they appear to have put a search string that includes the search term netoconcepts in the header as the referring site. Something like:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=omittedcrap:en&q=netconcepts
It’s not a bad idea especially if you are number 1 for your brand in the SERPs. It’s a nice twist on an old trick. The downside is that it will not create any links directly to your site from toplists.
I may not have noticed it if I had EVER mentioned netconcepts before, but I didn’t. Although, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to actually rank for that term now that it looks like someone is already Search Keyphrases Refferal Spamming it.
