Google referrer question
 

Does anyone know why I see this: http://www.GOOGLE.COM

as a referrer in my stats without a search string?


just curious

thanks

because people are checking for doorway pages that redirect google traffic.

don't know what that means but thanks....:)

basically, they believe that you have a page that comes up high in the search results, and believe that rather than allow the surfer to click, you are redirecting that person to a sponsor page. By sending a referrer of www.google.com, it is their belief that they might get a redirect to another page.

Similar in use to cloaking, but, a different tactic.

Do you know who "they" are?

I just started seeing this about a week or so ago...thought it was kinda strange

Just random black hat SEOers who are interested in finding out the source of such tactics.

Ok now i think I understand. But none of my pages redirect so there is nothing to for them to find.

Hope they buy something..:)

there are also some link verification bots that allow the user to specify what the bot shows as a referrer. Don't know why anyone would use google.com for that but it's still a possibility