Cheating on FaunaTopSites

Today I received a phone call from someone complaining about the numbers on the FaunaTopSites listing of a particular website not making sense to them. This site had only been around a very short period of time, yet the hits were very high in relation to the time of existence as well as the likelihood of the amount of traffic this site SHOULD be receiving. If this had been the only time I had heard this, I would have just chalked it up as something to look into later and probably forgotten about it.

BUT, thinking back, this site caught my attention the first day it was put on FaunaTopSites by generating an amazing 7,500 hits that very first day. Now that certainly caught my attention! Just so happened that I found one of the principle parties of this site on my chat board, so I proceeded to discuss this matter with this person. Come to find out that this person was sitting in front of the computer refreshing the screen over and over again in order to generate bogus hits to the site. Now I have to admit, I am impressed with anyone with the dedication to sit in front of a computer and do something like that 7,500 times! But not enough that I was willing to chuckle and let it go. I firmly warned this person that this was cheating on my site and it will have to stop NOW.

So with that in mind, I logged into my server and called up the access log file for FaunaTopSites. Did a filter for all hits to the site in question, and then scanned the IP addresses for each hit to the counter. I then checked the registration records for this and another site and not surprisingly found a match in the log file. I didn't count the number of hits emanating from this user's own IP address, but I will state that it was a substantial proportion of the hits the counter had logged for today.

It was VERY obvious that my warning had not been heeded.

With this info in hand, I sent an email to the owners of the site, spelled out my evidence and informed them that they were being removed from the FaunaTopSites listings.

The purpose of this here is to warn anyone else that is acting in such a manner, or may do so in the future, that they may be in jeopardy of the same resulting action if I find strong evidence of this sort of thing for their own site.

Looks like another one is cheating on the stats.

Don't these people realize that a jump from an average of 4,000 hits up to 18,000 hits is going to attract my attention? And their message board only has about 2 dozen members and visitors as a maximum count.

Honestly, if this keeps up, I will simply shut down FaunaTopSites and make it a static link display instead of a rating of traffic. I thought this would be useful for people to see how they would rate in traffic compared to other sites. Plus it would be helpful to see if any changes they implemented in advertising or other means to draw traffic were being successful.

But I certainly have no need to give people a place to play these sorts of games in order to have their site falsely registering much more traffic than they are actually receiving.

What the hell is wrong with people anyway?

If it's continued and repeated abuse of the fauna topsites listings, personally I'd like to know which sites are pulling this crap so that they can be avoided.

Maybe throw a post on the web watch forum revealing the guilty parties?

I know of a site that has gotten my curiosity peaked.

Example, it will display all the names of the members logged in, yet the number it gives for members online is always 4 - 5 HIGHER than what is acually displayed name wise.

In other words, members Alpo and Runt are the only ones online by name.
That is 2 members.
YET, the number listed as online will be 6 or 7.
Always like this without fail.

Is it their way of getting extra hits?
A program that generates fake hits by having extra fake members online at all times?

Hint - The site is #1 on FaunaTopSites.

Go see for your self and count the names showing against the # listed as online.

ReticEd: I know that there is a setting you can change in your profile so your name doesn't show up as a logged in but you are still counted as an online member. It is an option I personally use myself on a couple of forum sites. This may answer why you see 5-6 members logged in and only see two names of members logged in.

As for a person who would hit refresh on their site to make it look like it had more traffic is pretty pathetic! I too would like knowing which sites engage in such behavior.

Pixie

Thanks Pixie,
Must be a VBUll thing.. I'm still not used to its finer points, BUT that doesn't explain why it is like that 24/7 and always consistantly 4 -5 off.

Even now, it is off by that much.

The only thing I can say to explain this is extra members set up as invisible on someone(s) computer, logged as invisible and generating hits, constantly. very possibly a program set up as it is very consistant and 24/7.

Ed,

You're right that members choosing to not have their name show up as logged can't explain why it consistently shows the same number of additional members online. I can't answer that one!

I guess the only true way to find out is the administrator checking into the IP addresses that log in and regularly have many hits with no other apparent purpose. Unfortunately, that would be most likely a fair amount of work and time involved and I'm sure the administrator to this site has more important things to do with his time.

Another possible explanation is that there are "invisible" members that leave their browser open onto this site 24/7 but that is very unlikely as well!

I know I've left my PC with a page open for quite a while but I don't do it regularly... Who knows!

I can say that I am now very curious to know which sites engage in traffic boosting to achieve a higher topfauna rating. Any way of being let in on who is doing this Rich???

Pixie

I'd like to echo the idea of making public those sites whose owners/administrators are found to be cheating. Since you have given everyone a public warning, I would not see the need to give a private one for each future occurance. However, even if you did do that (not to assign MORE work on you), at that point I would think that anyone cheating on the site ought to be outed for their blatant dishonesty!

It's that type of cheating/lying/dishonest behavior that really gets to me! I can't stand liars, and I would like to know which of the sites are being run by such individuals so I can steer completely away from them and their sites!

I am working with the guy whom wrote the TopSites program now. He is looking into writing a program that will compare the stats shown on the FaunaTopSites program with the hits generated in my access_log file. There are all kinds of ways people can cheat at this program, but the raw log file on my server showing IP hits should be pretty accurate. Any significant difference in numbers would likely be blatant cheating.

In the same vein, multiple consecutive hits from the same IP to the same URL is also a very good indication of cheating.

As for mentioning names, the first site I caught red handed was ultimatecornsnakes.com. With the second site (Reptielen Forum), the guy is claiming he has no idea why that is happening.

This is too funny!
The site I mentioned has been dead on with the count and members listed since I checked at around 330 this am, and is still dead on.

I wonder how that happened......