SEO Tycoon

**jeffmcsheff** · 10-05-2006, 07:31 AM

How can i tell if people are hotlinking to my files on my site ? I'm looking at my stats package (urchin) and smoe things dont seem to add up , i think people are hotlinnking to my dowload files . Is there a way i can find out?

**ADAM Web Design** · 10-05-2006, 10:30 AM

Check for URLs that have nothing to do with your site in your logs (e.g. Myspace blogs, forums you've never posted to, etc.) I've got a client who has his images hotlinked to all the time, and this is where 95% of it comes from.

Another thing you can do, if you suspect you know which files they are, is to do a search on the filename itself (especially if it's uncommon.)

That should catch most of it. If not, you can find hotlinking scripts out there designed to block this sort of thing.

**jeffmcsheff** · 10-05-2006, 10:42 AM

can i do this through urchin , or will i need to parse the logs or something , ive got urchin , analytics , and webalizer ?

**stOx** · 10-05-2006, 03:55 PM

You could just prevent hotlinking with an htaccess

**jeffmcsheff** · 10-06-2006, 05:09 AM

does that article apply to people hotlinking to .zip files my server?

**stOx** · 10-06-2006, 09:23 AM

Yeah, But you need to change this line

Code:

RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ [F,NC]

To include the file extensions you want to stop people hotlinking.