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Ask HN: Why porn sites have links to my blog?
I have a small blog with only 3-4 good posts. Using Google search console tool I just found out that top linking sites (50-100 links to my homepage) are porn sites mostly with a .cn domain. They all look the same with same content. What benefit do these sites get by linking to my blog?
- slater 5y agoreferrer spam
- LinuxBender 5y agoCould it be your domain was previously owned by someone that had a high SEO score? Were you the first to ever register that domain? The wayback machine can help answer that. [1] If you want to have some fun you can redirect requests based on the referrer to a site of your choice. Or maybe just create a blog entry on your site about referrer spam, your thoughts on porn sites, etc... [1] - https://archive.org/web/ https://archive.org/web/
- smusamashah 5y agoIt's not on archive. I remember someone who greets HNers with a hairy egg. How do I do something like that?
- LinuxBender 5y agoOne way is to look up the configuration examples for redirecting based on referrers specific to the web server or load balancer you are using. i.e. nginx, apache, haproxy, etc.. Another way is to do this in whatever scripting language your blog may be using. I prefer doing this in the server as I don't have to fork the php scripts. What web server daemon are you using?
- smusamashah 5y agoIt's on github pages so don't have that level of control on traffic. I dont think it's an option.
- smusamashah 5y agoFound this https://github.com/MohamedBassem/spam-referrals-blocker https://github.com/MohamedBassem/spam-referrals-blocker I was thinking that may be they are just opening the site with Javascript disabled. But that wouldn't trigger Google Analytics. Can definitely be done on Javascript side too. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
- cpach 5y agoAh, yes, that would be jwz aka Jamie Zawinski.
- codegeek 5y agoReferrer spam mostly unless someone is targeting you (google Negative/black hat SEO). The best thing to do is to submit to google search console as a "Disavowed back link" [0] which is basically telling google that you don't want these to be counted as backlinks and they will exclude in ranking calculations. Also, add them to your google analytics as referrer spam [1] [0] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en [1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034842?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034842?hl=en
- smusamashah 5y agoThanks, I didn't know I can do that. It's a small blog with only 1 or 2 posts that come up in top results when Googled with somewhat specific words. I don't think it's being targeted. Filtering out these sites should work.
- MilnerRoute 5y agoHere how I always thought that worked: - They know webmasters will go through their referrer log, and when they see the link they'll click through to see who's linking to them. (Hence visiting their site.) It doesn't cost them anything -- and if they do it enough times, they'll actually get something like traffic. - Also, some blogs use a plugin that automatically detects when a site has linked to a post -- and then announce that (in the form of a comment on that post).
- smusamashah 5y agoWebmasters is such a small target audience. Is it really for them? I just visited a bunch of these sites which all look exactly same and didn't even open any video. I was just frustrated to see the backlinks from originating from absolute irrelevant place and going to exclude them. But probably you are right. If it doesn't cost them anything then why not. Someone will visit or may even share those links. That's what spam is for.