YASQ (Yet Another . . . )

[Mandi]

..Stats Question, hang with me here . . .

My 4th highest referrer this month is:

1471[nbsp][nbsp] 6.09%[nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp]42[nbsp][nbsp] 0.93%[nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp] 18472324[nbsp][nbsp]16.14%[nbsp][nbsp]| [unknown origin]

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Huh?[nbsp][nbsp]Unknown origin?[nbsp][nbsp]Is this likely to be someone stealing bandwith?[nbsp][nbsp]I had a rash of that about 6 months ago, detected via "referrers" . . . UBB's on other sites stealing my UBB graphics, grrr!

[Brian]

This might just be people bookmarking your site, but I will have to further look into this.

-Brian

[Shalazar]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that Brian.

I have two distinct logs in my stats for those two classes:

17[nbsp][nbsp]167[nbsp][nbsp]0.86% 11[nbsp][nbsp]0.44% 2656 [unknown origin]
30[nbsp][nbsp]93[nbsp][nbsp] 0.48%[nbsp][nbsp]0[nbsp][nbsp]0.00% 1123 bookmarks

[Brian]

I could not find anything on that specific error, but my search did yield the following:


If a document on your server is requested because a hypertext link to it on a page of a foreign web server is followed, the name of this server gets logged as the referrer URL (the URL of the page referring to your document). Note, that if the URL is specified manually in the browser, no referrer URL gets logged. Such requests are collected under Unknown in the referrer URL part of the report.

http://www.netstore.de/support/manual2.3/manNF.html

If I find anything further out I will let you know.

-Brian

[Justin]

The referer completely depends on the browser. If someone were stealing your images/bandwidth, their URL would appear as the referer - they cannot hide it, as that would be a function of their user's browser.

I have found that IE sends a referer no matter what - if I am at Yahoo, and I type in your domain - suddenly Yahoo is a referer.

Some browsers send a "Bookmarks", some "File Referer", and some just send none when you click a bookmark/shortcut/link. It totally depends on the browser and version.

GetRight Download helper sends it's home page as the referer, I suppose in an attempt to get people to visit their site when people use their program to download.

Unknown origin is either that the browser is not sending a referer, or a search engine spider that isn't sending one, or possibly users behind a cache that is stripping the referer URL out of the headers.

It is for these reasons and more that you can't totally rely on the HTTP_REFERER for things (like preventing image theft by swapping a "Stolen Image" image...) - it's not something that is 100% standardized...

Anyway, hope this helps in some way :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support