Hi,

Looking at our website traffic from the past few weeks, I have found that we have received a number of visits from a link on a page called ISurfCash. I had a look at their website, it says that it is an automatic traffic exchange system where companies can pay to have a link included to their own site. Users then download a piece of software which automatically clicks on the links which leads to greater Alexa rankings.

We didn't register with this website and I have since sent a message asking to be removed from the listings. I have since read here on this forum that these types of programs are banned from Adsense and I was just wondering if this type of link could have any negative effect on our site with the search engines or whether it could be seen as a type of spamming.

Any help would be appreciated.

Neil

I was just wondering if this type of link could have any negative effect on our site with the search engines or whether it could be seen as a type of spamming

Nope ..

Cheers Chris

You don't have a link from ISurfCash. ( Or, at least, I'm 98 % certain you don't. ) If they're a sleazy traffic exchange system, well, you won't get traffic ( ie a link ) from them without paying for it. That's how they make their money.

So why do you see them in your referral logs? Thanks to a wonderful new invention called "referral spam." When you click a link, your browser requests that document ( usually an html file, but it can be anything ) and sends the current URL as the referrer in the request header. This is VERY easy to spoof. And a lot of scummy web sites do. They want you to click the link in your logs to visit their site, and ideally to sell you something.

Also, apparently, a lot of web sites publish their logs, so this also gets the spammer a free one-way link.

So, assuming that's what's going on, you have nothing to worry about. It's just a minor inconvenience, giving you bad numbers in your reports, and draining a small amount of bandwidth. You can block the referral spam bot by IP address to put an end to this. I think Chris can give you more information here - the guy is a genius.