Topsite Cheater? Advice Please
 

I'm not a prolific poster in these parts, as I am usually able to sort things out myself, but this one is a bit more complexing... to me at least...

I have these figures for one site in my topsites referral stats

1 - No Referrer - 143
2 - http://www.domain.com/index.html - 67
3 - http://www.domain.com/ - 49
4 - http://domain.com/index.html - 8
5 - http://www.othersite.com/links.html - 1

The 'othersite' I am not worried about, because I don't stipulate all 'votes' must come from the same place.

It's the 'No Referer' that I want advice about.
Can I assume that the guy has 'voted' for his own site via a bookmark 143 times; or could there be another reason for that many "No Referers"?

This is in the course of a week. I have cookie protection, but we all know they can be deleted before accessing again.

I was thinking of not counting any votes that didn't specify a referer, but wanted advice from the board first, in case I would be eliminating some legitimate voters.

TIA

Steve

No Referer will also include anyone using a browser or "anonymizer" that either blocks or fails to include the referrer info in the HTTP headers. However the occurance should be reasonably consistant across all of your topsite accounts.

An excessively high "No Referrer" stat relative to your other accounts is a pretty good indication that there is something less than honorable taking place to inflate hit count.

Thanks for the reply Toby

I knew about the anonymizers... most sites have 1 or 2 "No Referers" a week, so I guess that is what they are.

I am pruning my lists again, starting with the ones that haven't sent any hits for 3 months, plus the 'obvious' cheaters. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something before deleting legitimate users.

If a site, like the example above, was sending a good number of 'real voters' as well as the cheat votes; would you delete the account or do what I originally thought and just not count the non-referring hits?
This would have to (i.e be easier to) apply to all accounts rather than pin-pointing a few.

Thanks again

Steve

A very good question. The problem lies in the fact that many No Referrer votes are legit. I'd hate to not count these when it may have a substantial effect on the overall rankings of your list over the short term. I hate turning away any good traffic, but I also hate dealing with cheaters. I'd probably delete the account, but that's a choice you'll have to make yourself.

could also be spamming into chats ;) or emails as i doubt outlook will pickup on it check though make sure he doesn't load your site in a frame if that is the case could also account for the no reffere ;)