One of my favorite plug ins for FireFox is RefControl. One obvious use is for those who use services like Entrecard, which is an easy to understand example. What exactly does the plug in do? It allows you to control what gets sent as the HTTP Referrer on a per-site basis. For those non-tech people, I’ll explain it this way:

When I’m clicking through Entrecard, every time I arrive at a new site, the referrer is Entrecard. In other words, I arrived via Entrecard. Well, that doesn’t do me any good at all. I want every new site I arrive at, to be referred by Revellian.com, not the site I was actually referred from. Why on Earth would I want to do that?

  • I want my site name on every server log
  • I want my site name listed in as many places as possible
  • I am an extremely bored deviant with too much time on his hands

    • Download the plug in, and go to RefControl options. In my example, I am using my homepage url as the  HTTP referrer. Type in <Default>, as in my example. This will spam the request with my article’s URL at nearly every site I arrive at – no matter where I arrived from.

    refcontrol example

    refcontrol example

    Many people check their server logs, stat panels and so forth to see where their traffic arrived from. If you do this, all they will ever see is your url, not the actual site you clicked from. Check out what I did at my buddy Jasmin’s site:

    ref-control-example2

  • In the red oval notated with the number 1, is the first time I arrived through Entrecard at his site. It says the referrer is revellian.com, not entrecard – exactly what I wanted. If you notice, it says I arrived from Germany; that is because I was using a proxy server to be tricky.
  • In the circle notated as 2 (I hope you’re not perplexed), I had RefControl turned off and it shows I arrived from Long Beach, Mississippi via Entrecard, the normal HTTP referrer. I also turned off my proxy server…no fun at all.

    • Lots of people use that Feedjit widget or other similar java scripts – I don’t because I already have enough of them. You can use RefControl to give you more privacy, and can control the referrer for every site individually (if you’re really weird). If you use BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog or any other site to search blogs from, why not use your own url as the referrer? It makes sense.
    I just used defaut so every site I arrive at is referred by me. Check out the plug ins features if you like. Jeez, I think I’ve been reading too many black hat seo sites. I think my beautifully crisp white hat just got stained. Once you taste the dark side, there’s no turning back. Please shoot me, I can’t seem to keep myself from doing stuff like this.:mrgreen:

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