- (OT) Netcraft Site Ranks Gone Mad?
- Posted by Roy Schestowitz on March 26th, 2006
Are you using the Netcraft toolbar? If not, this is probably irrelevant to
you. I apologise to have posted this, but no other forum seems suitable and
a Web search proved unfruitful.
Has anyone else noticed significant and extremely strange changes in Netcraft
site ranks over the past few days? I have just checked Netcraft's 'top
list', which seems to indicate that something has gone wrong...
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites
1 http://www. realityrox.com December 2000 Black Oak Computers Go US
2 https:// chandiespanties.com unknown XILO (UK) Ltd - XILO.NET - /22 Go UK
3 http://www. wellknow.be unknown Hot Spot Broadband Go US
4 http://www. talkstock.com August 1998 Rockynet
[...]
The toolbar confirms that these are *supposedly* ranked most highly for
traffic. Could it be that Netcraft experience a serious bug?
- Posted by Mark Goodge on March 26th, 2006
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 13:17:05 +0100, Roy Schestowitz put finger to
keyboard and typed:
I don't think it's a bug, as such. I suspect that someone has realised
that artificially inflating the Netcraft rankings will improve their
page rank - a bit like Referer spam. This is obviously something that
Netcraft will have to address, but I think the problem is more in
their checking systems than the security of the toolbar. Alexa had
similar problems when their site ranking toolbar was first available,
but they seem to have developed suitable algorithms to exclude
artificial traffic.
Mark
--
Visit: http://names.orangehedgehog.com - British surname distribution profiles
Listen: http://www.goodge.co.uk/files/dweeb.mp3 - you'll love it!
- Posted by Roy Schestowitz on March 26th, 2006
__/ [ Mark Goodge ] on Sunday 26 March 2006 14:20 \__
This seems to have been perfectly fine just a few weeks ago. Sites like Yahoo
and Google were well positioned.
Oh, hold on! UPDATE: now that I try to find some examples, it seems apparent
that Netscraft have resolved the issue (after about 2-3 days). I checked
their news section earlier and there was no word about a problem.
In general, the extent of the disrepancy was significant. Sites that were
typically around the 10,000 poisition dropped to 5+ million. I was basing
this assessment on many completely separate sites.
Apologies again, about this off-topic discussion.
Roy
- Posted by William Tasso on March 26th, 2006
Fleeing from the madness of the schestowitz.com / MCC / Manchester
University jungle
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com> stumbled into
news:alt.www.webmaster
and said:
Don't be silly - is there anything that Netcraft do that is actually
off-topic here?
--
William Tasso
whither a trophy?
- Posted by Roy Schestowitz on March 26th, 2006
__/ [ William Tasso ] on Sunday 26 March 2006 17:59 \__
Thanks for supporting this. I still find the group a bit intimidating. It's a
barrier I will maybe get past (at some stage).
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Did anyone see my lost carrier?"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
6:10pm up 18 days 7:55, 9 users, load average: 1.16, 0.73, 0.61
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
- Posted by MGW on March 26th, 2006
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:59:21 +0100, "William Tasso"
<SpamBlocked@tbdata.com> scrawled:
For that matter, is there any on-topic discussion on this list that
stays on-topic? And you did label it OT, so anyone who wanted to
could easily ignore it.
--
MGW
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even
when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. - Douglas Hofstadter
- Posted by Els on March 26th, 2006
MGW wrote:
I doubt that. Speaking for myself of course, but I find OT marked
messages very hard to ignore. They tickle my curiosity, as OnTopic
will be about the same thing as always, and OffTopic might be
something interesting ;-)
--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
- Posted by W˙rm on March 26th, 2006
"Els" <els.aNOSPAM@tiscali.nl> kirjoitti
viestissä:1maii8k7z4trz.36ckxr661dms$.dlg@40tude.n et...
<snip>
Sounds like a cat like a thing. They always go nose around any place one
close doors to or tries prevent them going into. I would not worry yet, but
if you all the sudden notice that you're purring after someone throws a
kipper i'd be slightly worried ;P
- Posted by Charles Sweeney on March 26th, 2006
Els wrote
True, they might be difficult to ignore, but those who chose to read them,
can't complain!
--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com
- Posted by MGW on March 26th, 2006
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 20:37:04 +0200, Els <els.aNOSPAM@tiscali.nl>
scrawled:
Ah, but I said "anyone who *wanted to* could easily ignore it." You
obviously don't want to ;-D
--
MGW
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even
when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. - Douglas Hofstadter
