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AVG recently activated their Linkscanner product. It scans all the results on a search page and downloads all of the pages. This has led to a skewing of web analytics data on many websites (recording the link scan as a visit even though no human viewed the page), as well as DDOS like effects for sites that appear in many popular searches (the Linkscanner downloads all 10/25/50/100 results on the page, even if the visitor never intends to visit the site).
There is much outrage. The leading articles are at TheRegister and WebmasterWorld, but there must already be many others.
The Linkscanner is easy to game. It has many features which give away its usage, not least the odd UA string. Linkscanner is easily fooled by sending it "nice" content, while delivering something else once the user clicks the link in the SERPs.
It was bound to happen: http://avg-watch.org/ has appeared, and AVG now has a lot more reputation management to perform ,as well as fixing their broken product...
Discuss
There is much outrage. The leading articles are at TheRegister and WebmasterWorld, but there must already be many others.
The Linkscanner is easy to game. It has many features which give away its usage, not least the odd UA string. Linkscanner is easily fooled by sending it "nice" content, while delivering something else once the user clicks the link in the SERPs.
It was bound to happen: http://avg-watch.org/ has appeared, and AVG now has a lot more reputation management to perform ,as well as fixing their broken product...
Discuss
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