Pop ups - 1st I've heard is on Alexa

**Flightmapping** · 27-07-04

According to Alexa:

Popups: Few (9% of sessions have popups)

AFAIK, my site is free of popups, although external links do open in new windows. Could anyone explain where this 9% might come from - could this be scumware in action by any chance? ( I'm not really someone who understands these things)

**Coopson** · 27-07-04

sounds like scumware!

**Mogga** · 27-07-04

Try running a link across all pages asking people to visit a certain page if they experience pop ups as your site is a pop up free zone?

**lowndsy** · 28-07-04

well your brand name/ site is certainly big enough to be specifically targetted by scumware operateors or the advertisers who use them.

**Flightmapping** · 28-07-04

lowndsy, could you explain more? How big do you need to be for them to target you? I thought they just operated by popping up whenever you did a search, or whenever certain keywords were displayed in your browser. Flightmapping gets around 2500 uniques per day.

**lakrasia** · 28-07-04

My site has external links and sometimes they appear as pop-ups and sometimes they appear as a new window. Maybe you have the same problem.

I haven't sussed why they're sometimes pop-ups and sometimes not, but I'd like to stop that happening, as it makes my site seem a bit dodgy.

**Flightmapping** · 28-07-04

Lakrasia, some links can be set to open in a new window, but I don't think that is the same as pop-ups.

I've always preferred them to open in a new window (see other posts about Expedia). That way if people don't buy from the site you send them to (ie 98.5% of visitors in travel), you still have another chance for them to look round your site after they've closed that window.

**Dynamoo** · 28-07-04

There's a fairly inconclusive thread at ABW and also some chat at Webmaster World.

Best bet is that either your site is using some sort of Javascript to launch new pages (e.g. for masking or tracking affiliate links) or possibly some sort of scumware, but I think the latter is less lkely.

**darrenw** · 29-07-04

Originally posted by Flightmapping
According to Alexa: Popups: Few (9% of sessions have popups) AFAIK, my site is free of popups, although external links do open in new windows. Could anyone explain where this 9% might come from

I had a site that was showing 8% popups on Alexa earlier this year - I have no idea why, as I definitely don't have popups on the site. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I've just checked Alexa again, and it is now showing "Popups: None". So maybe it is just a glitch?

Regards,
Darren.