My Site Was *Pounded* With Traffic... Not So Good!

This is a story with a surprise ending. Try not to skip to the end. Really.

So, I am looking at my stats on my magic book site on ClickBank that usually gets several hundred new visitors a day. And, I noticed it was getting...

...over 7,000 and climbing!

It began Sunday. So, I called HostGator and they said it could be a hacker, etc. (Most of the traffic was Taiwan, China, Russia, etc., with just a few from the USA and Canada. VERY suspicious!)

So, we added a few lines in the .htaccess and the bandwidth calmed-down... for about a minute.

Then, it started again.

By Monday morning, I had about 20,000 new page views and it was killing the bandwidth. Every few minutes, a new one.

Turns out...

... they are referral spam. What they do is spam your logs with a URL and when the search engines spider them, they get backlinks. Hmmm.

So, I did a little detective work...

First, they were registered with Godaddy. I called them and we found the web host and I called them. We talked and they determined, after I sent over my logs, that I could get the contact info of the persons involved. They were in California.

Sent them some email asking them to remove my site, etc. Then, when nothing happened, I called and spoke to the guy in charge.

He told me they were rotator ads and they pop up sites and "rate" them! He tried to tell me that it was great traffic. And, isn't it great, he asked, that so many people from all over the world are seeing my site?

I mentioned that these people are popping onto my site and instantly leaving. Over and over again. He didn't seem to care. Traffic was traffic.

Then... he dropped the bomb!

He asked me if I knew how they got my URL for this. (I had no idea.)

[Redacted]