A refback is one of four types of
linkback
A linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to, their articles. The four methods (refback, trackback, ping ...
s, methods for
Web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
authors to request notification when somebody
links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles.
A Refback is simply the usage of the
HTTP referrer
In HTTP, "" (a misspelling of Referrer) is an optional HTTP header field that identifies the address of the web page (i.e., the URI or IRI), from which the resource has been requested. By checking the referrer, the server providing the new web ...
header to discover incoming links. Whenever a browser traverses an incoming link from Site A (originator) to Site B (receptor) the browser will send a referrer value indicating the
URL from where the user came. Site B might publish a link to Site A after visiting Site A and extracting relevant information from Site A such as the title,
meta information, the link text, and so on.
Refback only requires Site B to be Refback enabled in order to establish this communication. Refback requires Site A to physically link to Site B. Refback also requires
browsers
Browse, browser or browsing may refer to:
Programs
* Web browser, a program used to access the World Wide Web
*Code browser, a program for navigating source code
* File browser or file manager, a program used to manage files and related objects
* ...
to traverse the links.
Security issues
If the referred-to site does not validate the referring site URL, it may be subject to
referrer spam
Referrer spam (also known as referral spam, log spam or referrer bombing) is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referrer URL to the site the spammer w ...
(due to forged referrer headers) and may end up with links to dynamic web content and private web sites, such as
web-based e-mail. Validating the referrer was considered to be a potential
denial-of-service attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...
vector, but is such a trivial attack that modern web server software has been hardened against this kind of attack.
See also
*
Linkback
A linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to, their articles. The four methods (refback, trackback, ping ...
, the suite of protocols that allows websites to manually and automatically link to one another.
*
Pingback A pingback is one of four types of linkback methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software ...
, a similar protocol but more difficult as it requires for physical links
*
Trackback, a similar protocol but more prone to spam
*
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "Organ ...
References
Blogs
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