Referral Link Explanation

[Glo]

When Mary Jane Doe visits joeant.com from a link on widgets.com, Mary Jane Doe's IP is captured, not the referring site's IP. If Mary Jane Doe is a unique visitor, meaning she has NEVER been to joeant before, even from a direct hit, then widgets.com will be cached and get a referral link on every page Mary Jane Doe visits. It's setup this way to curb abuse. It may be changed to capture each unique visitor coming from a referral link, even if the visitor has been to Joeant before from another source, but we want to see how well the current setup works first.

Joeant's index page was not set up to cache the referral links until today. So sorry, Jill, your link to us was to our index page. It wasn't cached but will be from now on ... as long as the script doesn't have a burp in it. :)

[ihelpyou]

Oh, okay. That clears it up.




NOT. :rolleyes:



:green:

[ihelpyou]

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :D



I guess I'd have to see it in action somehow.

[Glo]

You are bad, Heil Doug :p

That's the best I can do. Right now most of the referral links are coming from search engines.

If you haven't seen an info page here's (http://www.joeant.com/DIR/info/get/14552/29045/) one for you to view. ;)

Here's (http://www.joeant.com/DIR/info/get/11758/20379/) a typical info page. Note that there are also related sites listed.

These pages are being spidered by google. Not sure about other search engines.

[excell]

Could this have the potential to grow into some sort of link farm with all the crosslinks being established?

Can you explain a bit about why you think that links to the refer sites are valuable to the user?

[ihelpyou]

Oh, I see now. Pretty darn Kewlllll. :)

Actually, it's interesting to the user just because users like me are curious about the referrals to that page and where that page is linked from. So yes, I can see a benefit to them for the user.

[excell]

Yes, it's particularly interesting for folks like us! :D it would also help us if it logged the number of uniques from the referrer.

[Glo]

Could this have the potential to grow into some sort of link farm with all the crosslinks being established?

You will need to define what a link farm is before I can answer that question. The referral links rotate out as a new one comes in. There are never more than ten for each site listed.

Can you explain a bit about why you think that links to the refer sites are valuable to the user?

My guess is that the average user will not look at the info pages, so it's probably of little use to them. But they could come across one in a search and find it helpful. Just like the related links, the referral links could offer them another resource for the subject they are interested in, or a surprise they didn't expect but find valuable.

The referral link is probably more valuable to Webmasters and those researching and implementing optimization. All of the information on the info pages could be gathered and used without making it public. But by making it public everyone wins, including the average user. It has the potential to expand our search function into a very useful tool for our end users and serve them more relative returns on their searches. It also makes us unique and provides the information needed to add sites our users are interested in viewing.

We have no desire to list every Web site on the net. We want quality rather than quantity and we want to enjoy ourselves in the process. Time will show us just how useful this feature is and it's not the only one we will be experimenting with in the future.

I hope this answers your question. If you need more, I'll get more or find someone who can. ;)

[Hbird64]

Doug,

look at http://www.joeant.com/DIR/info/get/1242/999

This might help you understand our referral links system better.

You've sent us 15 uniques and can be found in over 100 topics. Remember you're listed in every info page in those topics. You probably have atleast 400 referral links within our site

Hugo

[excell]

Is nobody else at all nervous about this set up? :cute:

[ihelpyou]

Yes I am a tad.

It works the same way as those ffa pages use to work in that your link would be on the front page for a short time until it fell off because of other links being submitted.

I think I see problems down the line for this as this could serve to build up link popularity quickly in Google.

[excell]

Yes and then possibly go bust (PR0) and possibly take innocent sites with it and it all makes me very nervous about listing there..
;)sorry but I gotta say it..
(editing the smilie out those things can drive a person nuts!)

[ihelpyou]

AND, I think at the same time it Does benefit the searchers/users of JoeAnt. I do think it's a nice touch. It's like the related sites thing and gives their users extra web sites related to their visit to JoeAnt. So, not a bad thing but the only thing that is a concern is that it could possibly get caught up in a Google filter.

[Glo]

Since I know very little about FFAs, PROs, and link popularity, I can't address your concerns from a personal knowledge base. But I can say that our developer is quit knowledgeable in creditable SEO implementation and aware of googles guidelines. I'm sure he has done his research and he would not put Joeant at risk.

Someone will address the concerns made here soon. If you have anymore questions, please ask them, we'd like to know what others might be questioning so that we can better serve our users.

I think I will be learning more about this SEO stuff than I ever thought I wanted to know. ;)

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by excell
Is nobody else at all nervous about this set up? :cute: This feature is akin to features found on Google's very own toolbar and offered by most search engines, namely backward links. In this case, the backward links are ordered by referrer frequency. In the absence of spam, this is a good feature. :)

However, JoeAnt need to make sure they have some pretty good anti-spam technology in place, otherwise the system is open to abuse.

[JoeAnt]

This has crossed my mind and one of the reasons I dropped it from the last 25 referrers to just 10. We all know that only one backlink is needed. Having 400 within one site is overkill. Our intentions weren't to have you all over the place so that google can recognize and cache all the backlinks. This was done in hopes that you are referring traffic to a topic that ties in with your content. Giving your link and the domain listed on the info page more relevancy. I can see how this can grow into a problem the larger our database gets. Might be time to consider other ways to benefit our traffic and those that link to us without risking an angry googlebot. Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[excell]

I think that a simple *natural* invitation to "link to us" with some text link example html snippets would be better ;) than *making it so* which could in the long term be seen as artificial linkage and hurt the very people you are trying to help. All in my opinion of course.

[Alan Perkins]

Welcome to the forums JoeAnt :hi:

IMO it's a useful feature - try to keep it if possible. Maybe the backlinks need editor moderation before being made available publicly, or maybe you can automate a way to reduce the effects of abuse.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums JoeAnt! :hi:

I think the idea is a great one and I agree that it is like any search engine does now. I think the sites that may fall into the 'cons' part of it are sites like these forums. With the "add url" link we have on the front page, it's going to get a whole slew of daily visitors, etc, which will lead to a whole slew of referring links, eventhough you are showing 10 per page.

I'm not sure how you would change anything, but I do like the feature! :thumb:

[JoeAnt]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm normally very busy adding new features to Joeant, I rarely find myself typing anything but code. :D

I really love this feature. I'd love to list everyone who sends us traffic, but as mentioned above, not favorable to those that refer heavily or those that would take advantage of the system. One thing I thought of was, completely blocking those links when the spiders visits the page. Using the spiders host information, very easily done. If I did the above, would it be safe to list the unique referrals for that day on a single page found from the index page? Excluding all links with a query(?/=) in them. This way we're not listing every keyword search from Google, AOL, AllTheWEb, etc... which would overwhelm the others. I'll list all the unique referers by how many they've sent that day and show you the exact pages their traffic visited. The page that shows the exact pages will not be followed or indexed by spiders.

[ihelpyou]

That sounds like a good plan! But, I'll bow to the more techie members about it.... :rolleyes:

[JoeAnt]

The info pages will now show the top 25 referrers. All Major spiders are being blocked from seeing them. I'll get started on the page that'll show the daily unique referrers middle of this week. I can't see any spider engines having a problem with the new referral settings.

Our layout is very versatile. We'd love to hear from anyone that has new ideas for features they'd like to see Joe implement.

[ihelpyou]

Is that Mr. Joe, Mr. Ant, or Mr. JoeAnt, or just plain Joe? :D

sort of like.... plain jane.

[Glo]

Just plain Joe ... cause we're kinda informal and wanta keep it that way. :D

[JoeAnt]

Doug,

Very few SEO forums do more good then harm. I've seen entire discussions on other forums sending unsuspected webmasters in the wrong direction. They're constantly hinting on tidbits to trick the spider engines. Your forums are well managed, very informative, and most of the regulars know exactly what they're talking about. I've only found two other forums on the entire net that can claim the same thing. Someone should really list the others that find it more important to teach tricks then the proper methods to placement. I'm also appreciative for believing in us enough to give us a forum of our own on your site. Keep up the great work.

Jerry

[Matt B]

WOW ! What an endorsement!

Thanks Jerry!

Big Daddy Doug ought to be proud :D

[ihelpyou]

Oh, so it's Jerry?

Hey thanks Jerry! You all are doing some good stuff over there. Keep it up. I hope our little portion of cyberspace we have can help you all grow and grow. :)

And yes, Daddy is very proud of ALL the Kids. They are what makes a happy home. :D

[Glo]

I have to agree with Jerry, you all are doing a great job here. I've learned a lot just by reading the info offered on these forums. In fact, I spend more time than I should over here. :)

[ihelpyou]

Simply control panel your profile and make yourself "invisible". That way the bosses won't know you are here. :slywink:

[Alan Perkins]

JoeAnt people

Interesting new thread in the Spam Forum : Spammed Referrer Logs (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5515)

Shows that you definitely need to be looking out for this stuff...

[Advisor]

In fact, I spend more time than I should over here. Really? Nothing like that could ever happen to me... :slywink:

Too bad though...nothing you can do about it now. We've pulled you into our own little Web. You are ours now!

Jill

[Alan Perkins]

JoeAnt people:

I can't tell exactly what you've done to improve the situation, but it looks like there's more still to do.

IMO there are two audiences you need to worry about with referrer spam

1) robots
2) humans

Looking at your site, the robots audience is pretty easy to deal with. It seems that the "cat" pages contain the real meat. The "info" pages don't appear to offer anything suitable for robots, so you could just disallow them all using robots.txt:User-Agent: *
Disallow: /DIR/info/


That just leaves humans. IMO the only way you can make sure your human visitors aren't sent into "bad neighbourhoods" is by editors reviewing and approving every referral link. You may be able to automate this in some way, e.g. by building lists of "good referring domains" and auto-approving links to those domains.

[Kal]

Originally posted by Advisor
Too bad though...nothing you can do about it now. We've pulled you into our own little Web. You are ours now!
[insert menacing Dr Evil laugh here] :green:

[JoeAnt]

No doubt, this will become more and more of a problem the larger Joeant.com and it's database gets if we keep it the same way. Not just for referral spam, but I'm seeing a ton of webmasters stat pages popping up. The more people that find out about this feature, the higher the risk factor. The only thing we had in mind was content. Not for the spiders, but for the endusers. The referral links are not spidered and they're not used for placement purposes. The search engines generate enough referrals to fill the info pages with content, but we'd really like to reward those individual sites that went out of their way to link to us. That's the only reason we haven't put a governor on the results.

What we're looking at in the future and why you don't see a "Link To Us" page on our site, is because we plan on having those interested register first. This will be the only way we can manage those from taking advantage of the system. Those who register will have access to their own referral stats. View how many referrals(and impressions) they sent and see exactly where their traffic went throughout the site. Might not interest some, but it's there for anyone that wants it. Contests for gifts and prizes may also take place among the registered.

Decent sites that generate a decent amount of traffic that are not registered, we will consider pulling into the system. A lot of the current referrers will automatically get approved and we'll personally set their accounts up.

A live stats page linked from the index page will list in order the top registered referrers. The title and description from their listings will be pulled underneath the top ten.

If we see that taking all of these precautions fail to protect JoeAnt.com from spam, there are other ideas sitting in the wings that'll be ready for activation. Implementing a "Report Link" hyperlink next to each of them may also be a future feature.


We truly appreciate all of your concerns and thankfully look forward to all of your suggestions.

We can't make everyone happy, but dagnammit, we're going to try. :)