IHY: blocking referrer spam with htaccess

Apr 15, 2006 - 10:45 am 2 by
Filed Under

In Referrer Spam - Why you shouldn't publish your Web logs - Best Practices Search Engine Forums, an old thread originally posted by Alan Perkins, was recently revived by IHY member Dave B, who posts an htaccess file that looks like it could make a big dent in referrer spam for web sites that implement it.

Referrer spam is the practice of sending fake visitors with fake referrers to web sites, to have your URL appear in their log files. This is done in the hope that search engines will find the links and boost the spamming site's rankings.

It's not just a search engine spam problem, though: referrer spam can also interfere with traffic analysis. I checked my logs against Dave's htaccess list, and it looks like about 95% of the fake traffic would be blocked. Nice.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google December 2025 Core Update Intense Impact Early

Dec 14, 2025 - 7:35 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 12, 2025

Dec 12, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google December 2025 Core Update, Discover Alignment To Rankings, Search Console Features, AI Mode Updates & More

Dec 12, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

Google Gemini Local Results In Visual Formats

Dec 12, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google On AI Max Inferred Intent vs Raw Text

Dec 12, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Maps Share Button Drops X For Reddit & Facebook

Dec 12, 2025 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Google Adopting "Kinder - Gentler" China Strategy