help, someone is doing research on my site

one of my sites has been getting visited by a specific ip address. this guy will go to my backlink, click on it, and come to my site. he has done this with several of my backlinks. he has also searched for a few keywords in google and come to my site. he was logged in, so the keywords are encrypted, but i am pretty sure they are my target keywords.
this guy is doing extensive research on me. how do I stop him?
if he comes to my site from that ip address, can i show "this site no longer exists" using htaccess?

I know if it is a wordpress site there are plugins that you can block certain IP address. Not sure if yours is Wordpress or not. Also even if it is not most sites have a section in the cpanel or elsewhere that you can block IP address as well and it will just give them the forbidden error or what not.

The problem you face is he probably has all the info he was looking for....

Take the address and use robots.txt to ban/redirect him to a new page, say, google.com or something. He does have all of your backlinks anyway, so there probably isn't a whole lot you can do...

I wouldn't worry. Just keep on doing what you are doing.

Why do you care?

I hope it's not the FBI due to the customers that keep getting mad at you.

That is the name of the business. When I see a site that I think is making money the first thing that I do is reverse engineer it. Isn't that what we all do? I used to rank #1 for a couple keywords that were making me a boatload of money than competitors kicked my ass. It just means that I have to work harder and see what they did to outrank me. If you stop them there will be countless others. I would take it as a compliment of how good of a job you did that someone is trying to mimic your success.

fbrcold said:

That is the name of the business. When I see a site that I think is making money the first thing that I do is reverse engineer it. Isn't that what we all do? I used to rank #1 for a couple keywords that were making me a boatload of money than competitors kicked my ass. It just means that I have to work harder and see what they did to outrank me. If you stop them there will be countless others. I would take it as a compliment of how good of a job you did that someone is trying to mimic your success.

Click to expand...

This is not the case of a site that looks successful. He tries a different business every couple of weeks. It seems like every time he makes some kind of sale, the person wants a refund which he does not give. Too much to post but read his posts. One of these days something bad is going to happen. I hope it doesn't, but I am not kidding when I say that he is going to be labeled a scammer by the authorities. It's not that he's doing it on purpose. He does not know what he is doing.

Could it be that he is just trying to see what you did to learn? Clicks could come because you are using a shortner or he doesn't know how to see the link address without clicking.
It could also be that your links is all he finds in G. lol

But, you mentioned he was logged in. That means you have his email or can contact him thru your domain.
Why not send him a message asking him politely what he is up to.

"Howdy!

Our logs show you have an unusual pattern in approaching our domain. Could you please shed some light on your actions?

Kind regards,

Whatever-sig"

That way, he knows you are watching. If he is up to no good he is now warned you noticed him. see it as a light at your front door to prevent burglars.
At this point he has 3 options:
Explain what he is doing. (should make you sleep better)
Ignore you. (second message and then ban)
Insult you. (ban)

You should also take a close look at your site for weaknesses but this should not influenced by the current lurker.

People fear what they don't know, get to know him. lol
Just a thought.

redrubies said:

This is not the case of a site that looks successful. He tries a different business every couple of weeks. It seems like every time he makes some kind of sale, the person wants a refund which he does not give. Too much to post but read his posts. One of these days something bad is going to happen. I hope it doesn't, but I am not kidding when I say that he is going to be labeled a scammer by the authorities. It's not that he's doing it on purpose. He does not know what he is doing.

Click to expand...

180 threads is a bit much to read. I will take your word on it.

But: He did take action. lol

redirect his ip to a page that says "like my website? I sell it to you for $XXXXX "( 3 times what u think it worths) and a contact email

See even large sites does get some people researching on there website and finding out there way of marketing so i would rather suggest you to focus on working to strengthen your site instead of worry about this one person but there will be many if your site grows even more.