awstats referrer riddle

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Are there any awstats experts here?
I'm looking at the referrer section of my awstats, and I see several pages where people came to my site from and the pages make sense. That is, I can click through to the page, and there is a link to a page on my website.
But I'm also noticing the homepages of a few of my "competitors" websites. When I click through and arrive at their homepage, my link is not on it (I would be amazed if it was).
So how could that be a referrer if there is no link to my site on it?
Is this some kind of bug, and does anyone know what it means? :confused:
Thanks.
#website design #awstats #referrer #riddle
  • Refers are easily faked.
    Why would you do this?
    Because some websites leave there statistics open and they get indexed by the search engines, which gives the referer a backlink.

    Look up "referer spam" for more info.
    • [1] reply
    • Kirk,
      Thanks. I looked up "refer spam" and learned a lot.
      I looked through my results again and see several sites that stand out as being sleezy, and I think they may be referrer spam.
      But I see several competitor homepages, and it's hard to believe they are all doing this. Could there be any other explanation?
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    awstats referrer riddle

    Are there any awstats experts here? I'm looking at the referrer section of my awstats, and I see several pages where people came to my site from and the pages make sense. That is, I can click through to the page, and there is a link to a page on my website. But I'm also noticing the homepages of a few of my "competitors" websites. When I click through and arrive at their homepage, my link is not on it (I would be amazed if it was).