AI scrapers use bogus URL tracking tags to make website visits seem legit

It looks like AI scrapers have been using a surreptitious method of making their marauding presence appear legitimate, this time by appending a bogus query parameter, or tracking tag, to the URL of the webpage they are targeting. In the last month or so, I have seen a stack of page visit items looking something like this: https://disassociated.com/?ref=yourwebsitepage/213page/page/page/14page/16page/page/2page… I’ve replaced the actual website name with the generic yourwebsite marker in the above example. What is particularly insidious though, is the way the crawlers are using the names of reputable websites and blogs that have linked to disassociated in the past. Initially I thought some of these blogs had mentioned my website again, but after having a closer look at them, this is not the case. There’s also the detail that my web analytics app does not identify a referring page from the website supposedly sending visitors my way. The frequency of visits doesn’t stack up either. I’m…