Pingywebedition: what is it?

Edit: see the Pingywebedition Q&A for more answers!

Blogger statistics peculiarities
Lately I found some strange referring sites between my Blogger statistics. On one hand, there was this website that was actually linking to me (pingywebedition somee com) and there were some domain names. I first thought these were all related to each other, and to the 'service' that pingywebedition provides, but after some research I think they can be seen as separate. However they do have one thing in common: SEO, the nasty kind (see also my preluding post about SEO).

Pingywebedition
This website was linking to my blog and a handful of other sites. The page itself offers the possibility to 'ping' a maximum of a hundred of websites/pages. What? Ping? Web edition? Although I ping computers almost on a daily basis, and I had also familiarized myself with blackberry's 'ping' app, I was rather clueless about this one. So I went on a 'pingy' journey.

I learned about 'SEO ping': to notify other systems (ie search engines) about the existence (at first) and changes (later) of a certain blog (or feed, or page). Wordpress has this function built into it. Why? Well, to get indexed or mentioned on a site. The first makes your site 'findable', the latter could improve your search engine ranking. Useful? The common consensus of the web seems to be: perhaps a little, but only when you just started with your blog/site, when you are not indexed. Blogger however, being owned by Google, makes sure your pages are on Google without any effort from your side. Bang goes the theory.

What about pingywebedition referring to my site?
Right! That has nothing to do with the pinging! What happens is: people look at their stats or publish them. If they see the referrer they might pay a visit, or blog about it. This means: links for pingywebedition, higher ranking, exposure and even some direct visitors.

Really?
Yep. Via Google I found numerous of bloggers being happy, confused or proud that someone else was referring to them. One woman even devoted a whole post to the ping web edition tool itself. And here I am, writing about it as well (although I'm neither writing down the whole url computer-readable, nor advising you to use the ping tool). Btw: the website changes the links, so each time another blogger feels 'privileged' (I wonder how sophisticated this system is - edit: read the PS below!).

What about the other referrers?
These are there also just to be mentioned. This is called referrer spam, but is done differently: the referring site is spoofed into the web request. Most likely the response to the request (ie your page) isn't even rendered in a browser. That would also explain why these only popup in Blogger's statistics (which apparently relies on the request log) and not in Google's Analytics (which requires a piece of JavaScript code to be executed in the browser).

Driving force
The driving force of all of this? Money, earned via ads on the website(s). But for ads to bring in a reasonable amount of cash, you need a lot of visitors. Whether this justifies the introduction of all this noise into the web and search engine system? That's a question everyone should answer for themselves, I for one hope never having to go down that road!


That is all.

[EDIT] PS: Wow, it's even more sophisticated than I thought! I think it goes like this: pingywebedition does NOT link to your site! The referral shows up in your blog's statistics probably by means of referrer-spoofing (see above). Only when you click on the referrer-url in your statistics page, your blog shows up on the pingy web page. How? Your blog's url is transfered as referrer TO ping web edition (this is normal behavior), which then uses this information to build the page. It's like a mirror. I have to say that's smart.

Edit: see the Pingywebedition Q&A for more answers!