cheating

Having watched certain sites fairly closely over the last 6+ months I have to say that it's fairly dissapointing that so much cheating goes on.. it makes this topsites list pretty useless in my mind.. take the centre for reptile and amphibian reaserch for example, the other day they got 5242 hits from 25 unique visitors. PATHETIC. if that isnt cheating what is? it's been going on for a long time and they are not the only ones!

What are the rules re cheating sites here?

if it's allowed then i'll jump on the bandwagon too, if not then how about doing somehting about it?

watchdog

Originally Posted by watchdog

Having watched certain sites fairly closely over the last 6+ months I have to say that it's fairly dissapointing that so much cheating goes on.. it makes this topsites list pretty useless in my mind.. take the centre for reptile and amphibian reaserch for example, the other day they got 5242 hits from 25 unique visitors. PATHETIC. if that isnt cheating what is? it's been going on for a long time and they are not the only ones!

What are the rules re cheating sites here?

if it's allowed then i'll jump on the bandwagon too, if not then how about doing somehting about it?

watchdog

Yeah, I know some website webmasters cheat on the stats. They want to be on the first page of the site and will do whatever is necessary to accomplish that. I have caught several and slapped them with the evidence. Most flatly deny it even when the evidence is overwhelming.

So tell you what. You make a list of everyone who is cheating, your reasons for believing that, and provide as much evidence as you can to prove the cheating, then contact those webmasters and get back to me. I'll take it from there.

Originally Posted by watchdog

Having watched certain sites fairly closely over the last 6+ months I have to say that it's fairly dissapointing that so much cheating goes on.. it makes this topsites list pretty useless in my mind.. take the centre for reptile and amphibian reaserch for example, the other day they got 5242 hits from 25 unique visitors. PATHETIC. if that isnt cheating what is? it's been going on for a long time and they are not the only ones!

What are the rules re cheating sites here?

if it's allowed then i'll jump on the bandwagon too, if not then how about doing somehting about it?

watchdog

Pointing out that some sites are engaged in dishonorable activity is fine: the BOI was founded to point out, and ferret out the bad guys. I personally feel that this particular site is run with integrity, but your specific example from another site was excellent and illustrative of the behavior your wished to point out.

But saying that if permitted, you would jump on the bandwagon?
To me, cheating is wrong. It doesn't matter who does it, it is wrong. I agree that when one sees others doing something that is obviously dishonorable, and doing it with impunity, it is galling. I think it would be good to take the high road and help expose such misdoings, which your post helped to do.

I should not have said that i'll jump on the bandwagon, I wont. I disslike cheats, it's unfair, it's wrong. I have approached a couple of webmasters, all i got was f***off and mind your own business from repti farm. their stats are also really sad, I fail to see how 300 visits can equate to 4300 pagehits.

Pangea is another one.

One of the other webmasters I contacted decided to not be on the list rather than not cheat after presenting him with "statistics!"

I sent another message to reptile and amphibian research centre, i don,t expect a reply from them.

Thanks for being concerned
watchdoggie

PS, Lucille, what is also BOI?

Pangea has a very active Rhac forum hooked to the site. Does this contribute to the numbers in any way? I know, myself, will add several hits a day. Somehow I just think Matt has more to do than sit around and click refresh all day.

Originally Posted by Hurley

Pangea has a very active Rhac forum hooked to the site. Does this contribute to the numbers in any way? I know, myself, will add several hits a day. Somehow I just think Matt has more to do than sit around and click refresh all day.

I have to agree with this statement...I have met Matt on several occasions and I am sure he has a busy enough day that he would see this as a waste of his time...besides I am not sure he could sit still long enough to make a difference...LOL
I have been to his site several times as well...and had at least 10 page hits while I was there...and I have never been in his forum...so how can you reliably decide who is and who is not a cheater without a list of IP's and their respective hits?

I have another question...if anyone can answer it.
With all the worry about cheating the system to get higher ranking...can anyone tell me what kind of volume the LIST is doing FOR these businesses? It HAS to be trackable...

I guess I am just curious whether all the time these "cheaters" spend is actually in vain in the first place...which would make it laughable...or if the volume of traffic directed to them is so large it is worth the hours they might spend watching a screen refresh.

Personally I have only used the list once...and I actually went through it pretty far...looking for websites I haven't seen...not the top25 that everyone has seen before...

When I see signs of obvious cheating, it is pretty easy to nail down by taking a look at the domain logs for FaunaTopSites. What I will see is one or two IP addresses that are logging a whole string made in rapid succession of page hits to the target site being monitored via the topsites script. Often I will see a long string of page changes with only 2 seconds between page moves. For a message board system, this is pretty obvious since most people can't read pages that quickly. Now for a photo album or perhaps a classified section, yes, that might be feasible with someone quickly browsing through those kinds of pages.

As for a site logging a whole slew of raw hits with a low number of IP addresses, in some cases that can be possible as well. I have seen several instances of message board sites that seem to have 50 to 90 percent of the traffic coming from less then a half dozen participants. In some cases, I have seen nearly all of the traffic take place with only the moderators involved in discussions. So is this "cheating"? Technically, no, not in my opinion. There is nothing at all that says three or four people can't whip up a message board system and simply use it to talk among themselves as much as they want. That is really up to them, if that is what they want to do.

That being said, I HAVE actually caught some people who have obviously sat in front of their computer and refreshed the screen over and over again. One particularly energetic individual was doing this to the tune of over 7,000 refreshes per day. In most cases like that, I simply remove them from the system after letting them know they have been caught. In others, I may be more subtle about it and tell them that there is something broken in their system making a bunch of bogus hits on the topsites engine and they need to "fix" the problem. Those who take the hint can remain on the listing. Those that don't get booted.

Wow...I figured the info was available. I didn't know it was available to the degree of how fast the hits came from a particular IP address.

I can understand then how it would be much easier to catch cheaters...
I have been part of a 3 or 4 person conversation like you described...using a message board...mostly because it is an easy way to have a group conversation that other people, not available at that time, can read and reply to later...it can definitely rack up the hit count, I am sure...never thought about that.

Thanks for the explanation...I was certainly curious and slightly skeptical (ever the Devil's Advocate by nature)...but this makes MUCH more sense to me now.

Oh, yeah...

ANYONE who will sit in front of their screen for 7000 refreshes had better find a hobby...

I mean, really...don't they have animals to feed or cages to clean...or SOMETHING?

I guess they don't realize to have an AVERAGE hit count...they would have to do that every single day...sounds like an extreme waste of time to me...

Yeah, most cases of cheating are really just a "flash in the pan" situation as it will wear anyone down after a short period of time. I have actually seen cases of cheating where you could tell the main perpetrator took a day or two off to recuperate and then came back at it after the break. Sooner or later they will fall to the wayside when they get tired of it.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of it all is to try to get on, and remain, on the front page of the topsites listing. In some cases, even though I know cheating is taking place, I will allow it to continue just to see how persistent that person is. Then it all becomes wasted effort when I pull the plug on them.

Really, to get on the front page is not all that difficult to do. But getting into the top 10 and staying there would be a real feat for someone with a LOT of perseverance. But these people are missing the entire point of a topsites program. It is a measure of how effective you are in promoting your site and getting people to come to it. It is direct feedback about your efforts to attract visitors. That's why I have both measures visible (raw clicks and unique IPs). The unique IPs will show you how many actual IP addresses (which roughly equates to a unique person per IP) come to your site, whereas the raw hits will tell you approximately how much each person will find of interest on your site. If you see 100 unique IP addresses logged with 1000 raw hits, then each person is looking at an average of 10 pages on your site. That is a good thing. However, if you see 100 IPs and only 100 raw hits, then you have a problem. That means people are coming to only one page on your site, then leaving.

One thing of interest I have noted related to above is that some of these services that offer traffic to your site are really a big waste of money. I have seen some people buy into these things and yeah they will get a lot hits from them, but they are obviously from some kind of hit generator program. Those things will obviously generate unique IP addresses for each raw hit. A friend or mine bought into one of these services and it was very obvious what was going on. There is just no way you would get a 1 to 1 ratio between IPs and raw hits on a site that was a classifieds site with many pages on it. So if you see that sort of service being advertised and think it may be something you are interested in trying, you may want to just save your money. Of course, something like this would be right up a cheater's alley if they want to save wear and tear on the refresh button.