Concentrate On Your Readers, Not On The Spammers

We've been exploring the nature of referer spam for over a year now. I've provided various suggestions about the problem - what you should not do, the observation that it does not actually show traffic to your blog, and even why Stats is vulnerable to this abuse.

To the most frequently asked question

What do I do about it?

the answer is generally

Don't click on the links.

And that's just half of the answer, if we think about it.

We've slowly realised that referer spam is probably here to stay - so "Don't click on the links" is similar to "Close your eyes, and you won't see it". Maybe, we should try a better answer.

How about we tell everybody to just get back to work on their blogs?
This will have 2 benefits.

• You won't have time to click on the links.
• Your blog will get some real traffic.

In time, with actual traffic from actual readers, you won't see the referer spam. You'll have actual reader activity, in your Stats log. Isn't that really what you want?

Win - Win - Lose (You - Your readers - The spammers).

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