FOX network tracking pixels on my site?

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FOX network tracking pixels on my site?

trgc.opt.fimserve.com reported by Google webmaster tools

mcglynn

5:22 pm on Dec 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

Google's webmaster console has a new "Labs" feature that reports page download speed. Below the graph is a series of page details from the Page-Speed system.

Many of the pages on my site showed superfluous single-resource hits from a domain that *does not appear* in my code:

trgc.opt.fimserve.com

The full URL embeds my content URL at the end -- omitted here, but the URL looks like this:

[trgc.opt.fimserve.com...] ID]&atad=http%3A%2F%2F[MY ENCODED URL]&rnd=[ANOTHER NUMERIC ID]

It's pretty clearly a tracking pixel. Why does Google think it's coming from my site?

Google's page-speed data comes from Google Toolbar users. Perhaps some of these users have some sort of FOX tracking software installed too?

I'm 100% sure FOX didn't hack my website. I'm 100% sure the fimserve IMG tags didn't come off of my server.

So why does Google think they did?

Jane_Doe

6:11 pm on Dec 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

I am not sure about your particular problem but in general a small fraction of the results for my sites has some stuff that is just totally off the wall, like showing high rankings for some super competitive terms my sites have really never ranked for at all. So personally I find a lot of the data in webmaster tools very helpful but I wouldn't count on every piece as being 100% accurate.

epistable

11:19 pm on Dec 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

Do you have any embedded widgets from any Fox properties that could be causing this? Your best bet is probably to use a tool like firebug or charles while loading your page to see every script/hit being called so you can track down if there's something causing this or if it's an error on Google's part like Jane Doe said.

mcglynn

12:03 am on Dec 7, 2009 (gmt 0)

The only embedded widget is from ShareThis. When I load these pages in my browser, Firebug does not show the Fox-network pixel.