__/ [ Mark Goodge ] on Sunday 26 March 2006 14:20 \__
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 13:17:05 +0100, Roy Schestowitz put finger to
> keyboard and typed:
>
>>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?
>
> 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
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
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