what are referrers? they’re messing up my stats because they don’t seem legit

  • Unknown's avatar
    kindradical · Member ·

    All of a sudden I have a bunch of traffic – not much really, but more than usual, and I know these are not people/sites that would be normally checking my site because there is no related connection. Can I stop this from happening, and what might I have done that is attracting these referrers. if anything?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    1tess · Moderator Emeritus ·

    They could be spam referrers.
    I’d say report it to staff but they are away until 16 Aug 2010. I’ll modlook this thread and we can hope one of them will see it when they check in.

    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/unknown-referrers?replies=17

  • Unknown's avatar
    johnnytesting · Member ·

    Support wants us to send them the URLs of the referral spammers. If you only see a partial URL try not to click on the links to get the full URL, you can just hover your cursor over the partial link as it appears in your stats page, and right click “Copy Link Location”. Then paste the link into your message to Support.

    Until the staff get back from wherever I’d suggest saving the links in a text file.

  • Unknown's avatar
    raincoaster · Member ·

    Please do a forum search next time: there are dozens of threads about this, one or two new ones each day.

  • Unknown's avatar
    johnnytesting · Member ·

    …there really should be a sticky post about what to do with this stuff, it would also make sense for there to be a link — other than the support page — where we can submit the referrer spam links directly.

  • Unknown's avatar
    raincoaster · Member ·

    For whatever reason, staff is really reluctant to add stickies. But yes, there should be a Submit Spam Referrers thing which is easier to use and different from the regular contact staff, it’s such a widespread issue.

  • andrewspittle · Staff ·

    @kindradical Those stats from a short while ago do seem to be spam referrers. That link 1Tess provided gives background information.

    We’re aware of this problem and are working on a solution. In the meantime sorry for the trouble and thank you for the patience. We’ll get this sorted as soon as we can.

  • The topic ‘what are referrers? they’re messing up my stats because they don’t seem legit’ is closed to new replies.