Jimmy Wales wrote:
E23 wrote:
This thing clearly is a robot used for the single purpose of getting just such links as on our stats page, to increase their google ranking.
That might be, but it's hard to say for sure.
Let me see if I understand your theory...
Someone writes a robot to go around clicking on lots of websites with a referrer variable set to a site they are trying to promote. The purpose of this is specifically to get listed as a referrer on lots of stats pages, in the hopes that google thinks those stat pages are legitimate references, and so rates that original site higher.
That had not occurred to me, but seems entirely possible. I should note that a few of the links I saw on that stats page are all happen to know, owned by the same company.
That's right. It's called "referrer log spam". Googling will find lots of discussion of this phenomenon.
-- Neil