The Tale of the Screenshots

First, let's be clear on some things. Yes, this was planned. No, I wasn't planning on doing this forever. That's why I was so blatant about what I was doing.

Here's the story at the beginning. I was researching the fact that Websense had started bird-dogging my site and was researching ways to, well, fuck with them and set up some sort of robots.txt program to knock 'em away. Yeah, as I found out, next to impossible without at least a lot of programming time, but meanwhile, someone on a board had mentioned proxy sites like proxy.org, which basically covers your own computer's IP address from the site host. That's when the wheels started running about a certain local competitive web site ranker that seemed to have an interesting trend when it came to the highest ranking sites, week after week. Oh, no, I wasn't trying to accuse anyone in particular of being able to game the stats, but I was starting to realize that I may just have had their book read, so to speak. Just for giggles, I decided to try it on the Sacramento Top 25, at first clicking in about 10 site votes (pretty rapidly actually) to see what happened. As it turns out, my site went up from about the mid 20s to number 7 on the next reset (which, in the case of the Sacramento Top 25, takes about 2 hours. A little hard to explain if you're not a member of the site, or maybe even if you are, but bear with me here.)

The next day, the site had reset back to zero, and thus a new beginning with zero votes for everyone, so I decided to have some fun.


Sunday, July 06, 2008, 10:34:06 AM

Naturally, at this point I placed an entry on my blog "bragging" about my accomplishment (and being pretty blatant about how I did it, that is unless you're kinda sloooow- if you don't believe me, read the reprint here) so, with the trap in place, let's proceed to have some fun...


Monday, July 07, 2008, 6:07:41 AM

I must confess that this was much more amusing to me than it should have been...


Monday, July 07, 2008, 8:14:34 PM

Of course, I have all this stuff to deal with like work (where incidentally, proxy sites are blocked) and I do happen to like daylight and playing music and reading and eating and stuff, so if it wasn't so easy to nail up these stats there's no way I could have gotten this many votes, but about 10 to 15 minutes max, sporadically over time would do it...


Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 6:09:34 AM

There's plenty of opportunites for downtime, however... Dinner's cooking...


Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 7:47:12 AM

And darn that insomnia (just like counting sheep, but puts ya to sleep a lot faster)


Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 6:28:36 PM

(Just kidding, those last 10 votes took about 3 sips of coffee and I was running around for the day. But I did get a least one briefly sleepless round in later)

It's around this time that, unbeknowst to me, the folks at the (then) number 2 Xenophilia site just happened to be reading my blog! What kind of kooky coincidence is that? Strange how, despite the fact that I did not mention their site by name, my comments... gee, correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like they just seemed to take it personally for some reason! Aw, that can't be! Let's just forget that I mentioned that and continue.

(Oh, but before I do, I need to mention that there's never been anything wrong with my music link, so I'm not sure where Xeno was going but the address he had linked wasn't it. And now there's yet another UPDATE anyway, seeing as I've yanked all the AcidPlanet stuff, and I've got all of 'em on my own page: Click Here, Pilgrim)


Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 7:58:38 PM

Ah, the calm before the storm...


Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 10:10:07 PM

At this point, before showing you the next screenshot, it's important to quote Xeno from his own blog entry:

Update #1: Okay, I’ve checked it out and here is how to use proxy.org to increase your page rank:

1. Go to proxy.org
2. Put in your blog address
3. Click the [Go] button over and over until you finally get working proxy that displays your web site. (Took me 5 tries.)
4. Find your “Top Sacramento Web Sites” banner and click it!
5. Keep doing that over and over for hours.
It works because the site only allows each IP address to vote once a day or so, but this way, as long as you find enough new proxy sites, you can vote for yourself many times. Brilliant… I guess

So, Xeno, it's really time consuming, is it? After all, you just said so yourself.

Step into my parlor said the spider to the fly...


Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 6:15:46 AM

Hey! What the fuck, let's reprint Xeno's Update number 2 at this point!

Update #2: Cripes! A lot of those proxy sites try to infest your computer with malware. Use at your own risk.

Now remember that kids, just in case you get any funny ideas...


Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 1:31:37 PM

Isn't that amazing? My 65 vote lead was not only cut to ONE vote within a short time, and on top of that, Xenophilia had to register 103 votes in literally just a matter of hours just to catch up to me! Amazing! And without the use of those pesky time-consuming, dangerous proxies!


Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 5:12:39 PM

It's at this point where I had learned enough and had enough fun. (C'mon, you really think that I was going to do this forever?) I removed my Sacramento Top 25 banner, and switched my site with something a bit more, erm, Sacramentan...


Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 7:04:16 PM

Yay! "A Picture Of The Capitol" instantly made history as the first site to DEBUT on the Sacramento Top 25 at number one! Since, probably like, the first site to click in on the first day at least.



Also Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 7:06:32 PM

Now, this, admittedly was pretty funny (Xeno even added a big ol' photo of the Capitol at the top of his main page...hilarious!)


Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 9:19:58 PM

Now at this point, I was seriously considering an update to "A Video of Sutter's Fort", but unfortunately Mr. Bressler had other plans...

Here is the final screenshot before the "straw dog" site was booted (courtesy of Xeno - couldn't catch this one, it was re-altered by the site operator before I could get to it- thank you for being there, brah- and by the way, I'm not sure what you're bragging about, the resulting order makes you look kinda foolish - hehe, heh)


Didn't catch the date/time, already was done

Yeah, that was fun. No, you can't tell me that people aren't using proxies to stay on top of the list, week after week. They're just a lot more subtle about it, and unlike me, they wouldn't freely admit it. But as long as they don't admit it, and stay cool about it, there's nothing that can be done to prove it. But it can be done very quickly and easily.

So hey, this is an important lesson about web security and statistical integrity and don't worry, John, I'll never darken your halls again (even playing nice by the rules, which I assure you that I have up until this happened.) There's nothing personal against you as you have tried to come up with an original and useful site and have succeeded to a certain degree. I just hope that you can build a secure site as well as a vital one eventually.

Otherwise, no harm done. It's not like I tried to rig the... what's some of those local awards called again? Oh yeah, like I fixed the Oscars or some dumb shit like American Idol or whatever.. (Yes, Xeno I know you won Sammies or whatever. Stop taking shit personally.) So hope that this information helps to improve your site and you're welcome.