Have you been pestered by these little piss-ants? There's a good chance you have, and it's more than likely been through your referrer/referer logs. AdminShop has some cheesy little program called Reffy (now PRStorm) that takes advantage of the fact that some sites have their referrer/referer logs open to the public and can spam you with links to their site in your logs which gives them a "backlink" to increase the link popularity to their site, since these log files get crawled by the search engines.
This spam tactic is generally used by people, such as those who run AdminShop, that face the reality that they couldn't achieve any real rankings the usual way that most people work hard for, so instead they use this spam technique to help their pathetic asses out. The problem with people like those that run AdminShop is whether you have your log files public, or private like I do, they persistently spam you anyway and don't care either way when they do so.
These are other websites owned by the same people. I had dealt with webdevboard spam first, and they used the same tactic to get people to their message board in which you had to join to find out why you were seeing their referring/refering link in your log file. Of course the outcome was typical, no one approved and they let them know about it. Yet they didn't care. Devaddict was another I have dealt with and quickly blocked. I have not had dealings with the other domains but have read that they own them as well, so they've been pre-blocked to avoid any hassle.
The easiest way to limit this is don't make your log files public, or at least disallow search engines access (robotstxt.org). If there's nothing to crawl, there's nothing to spam. On an unrelated note, not making your log files crawlable serves another purpose. When people are trying to query information about certain IP Addresses or User-Agents, we don't get inundated with log file after log file that just happen to contain that information. See, you stop idiots and clean up the search engines all in one shot!
If you have the ability to use an .htaccess file (check with your host if you're unsure) then blocking AdminShop referrers/referers spam is quite easy to do. All it takes is just a couple of lines of code in your .htaccess file and then you're done with them for good. Here is the code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?adminshop.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.*$
RewriteRule ^.* - [F]
If you want to collectively block all of their sites, then that's easy to do as well:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?adminshop.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?webdevboard.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?devaddict.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?whiteguysgroup.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?guestbookz.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?xopy.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?webdevsquare.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?datebywebcam.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?reffy.net/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?prstorm.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.*$
RewriteRule ^.* - [F]
The owners of AdminShop aren't the only people that resort to this type of referrer/referer spam. There are others who do the same, but it's the fact that the owners of AdminShop are so blatantly open about not caring, that's the reason they're the most disliked and is also the reason why there are so many people out there that want to deminish their efforts and are letting people know how to block them.
Another thing to note is that they don't actively abuse just referral logs, they also abuse the referrer options built into most of the popular blog software. If you have this feature enabled, disable it if you have that option. This is a pointless feature anyway, and I have no clue why it's even included into blog software. If you just happen to like the feature, at the very least disable the live links. The only reason these people persist is because others give them free opportunites to do so!
If you'd like to make others aware of this page, you can use the following linking structure(s):
<a href="http://visualintensity.com/adminshop-com/">AdminShop</a>
<a href="http://visualintensity.com/adminshop-com/">Reffy</a>
<a href="http://visualintensity.com/adminshop-com/">PRStorm</a>
Over the time this page has been up it has recieved quite alot of traffic. I hope it has helped alot of people out, although based on many emails I know it has. Some of the traffic I recieve is from blogs, where people are complaining about the refferer/referer spam and pointing here to advise others how to stop it.
In these same blog posts, people are LINKING to Adminshop's website. What are you doing!? You complain about them and then give them exactly what they want, a backlink to their site. Don't you understand that's the point of the referral spam, to build backlinks to their site? So when you actively link them from your blog(s), you're only helping them accomplish their goals easier. Please stop providing them with active links!
February 18, 2007: I moved my blog and only carried over 2007's posts, so the one I had linked below didn't make it. It basically says that I was looking through my stats and I see a referer come through from Google for a search for PRStorm. I obviously assumed this page turned up, and it did. But what did I see at #1? prstorm.com! Google had let this spamming garbage back into it's index. I just checked and no longer see it at #1, but the site is still in the index if you run a site:prstorm.com search. But when I saw it at #1 all I could was shake my head.
It does come up #1 on MSN/Live for PRStorm. prstorm.info comes up 2nd on Yahoo, so bans must not be permanent.
December 31, 2006: Didn't think I'd be editing this page again, but [ blog post link no longer available ].
June 06, 2005: According to a blog from Ann Elisabeth some months ago, the notorious "Odin" had stopped using the Reffy tool himself but it seems Reffy is still alive and well regardless of who is in charge. I get a lot of traffic searching for Reffy, as well as Adminshop, which means the effects of the crapware hasn't stopped. If the problem didn't exist noone would be searching for it (kind of like the traffic I still get about John Kerry).
It seems reffy.net redirects to prstorm.com. If you have blocks in place it's just another of many URLs by these little shitheads that needs to be blocked. I've not seen the URL in action yet but one can only assume it's causing webmasters problems. I'd really love to run across these kids. They wouldn't be happy with the meeting.
Feb. 13, 2005: Did Google already take them out again? "Sorry, no information is available for the URL reffy.net" ( reffy.net | reffy ). I never noticed how long they were actually live under that domain, but it took months for adminshop.com to get shut down.
Feb. 7, 2005: It seems since their unethical referer spamming got the adminshop.com domain banned by Google, they've moved their operation over to reffy.net, which adminshop.com redirects to. So take the time to add that URL to your list as well. Maybe I'll make a Reffy page. ;) This page is still a #1 reminder of their former domain. This really shows their ultimate stupidity though, do something wrong, get banned by Google, move to another domain to repeat the process. Hopefully anyone that actually uses their product suffers the same fate.
Dec. 31, 2004: As of right now, Adminshop.com appears to be banned from Google and this page now shows in the number 1 spot for Adminshop. When I first started this page in September, it got indexed in about a day and it immediately went to 2nd and stayed there for Adminshop, just below the actual site. An update by Google a couple of weeks ago dropped me a couple of spots.