AVG is not a webmasters worst enemy ...
AVG has an installed user bas of 70 million, but not all of these are Internet Security v8 users, which is the package that has LinkScanner in it - that's less than half of the user base.
If you then take into account the global number of web users there are AVG LinkScanner users make up a miniscule fraction of all the web traffic in the world.
So far the only complaints I've heard are from low traffic sites (probably people not willing to spend much on their sites in the first place) and none of the big sites have come out complaining, probably because they're not bothered about the background "noise" LinkScanner creates in their stats (maybe rightly so?).
Considering the number of hosts who allow unlimited or at least high levels of bandwidth for low cost there's a case for those sites experiencing bandwidth issues to insist their host providers up their limits or they move their sites to friendlier providers.
When it comes to stats, most of the reason stats are important these days is in selling ad space - in which case a higher number of visits is a good thing, not bad. if you're trying to measure conversion rates then there's a problem, as your percentages will fall. For companies who use cross media advertising (traditional as well as online) to drive trafic to their sites, this should pose little problem. For those who rely entirely on their search engine listing to drive traffic then you're going to get hammerd if (and only if) your keywords and phrases are popular.
The obvious solution for low traffic, "low cost" websites is to diversify their marketing so they're not reliant on search engines only - this is basic marketing practice and anyone serious about their business would be doing this anyway.
All of this is a storm in a tea cup - it's not a big issue and it doesn't affect websites in general in a detrimental way. In general I agree with the principal of LinkScanner, although I think that maybe the implementation is something that should be (as some have already said) be more tightly integrated with the user's web browser itself, making the stats and bandwidth issues less of an issue as the LinkScanner would more closely represent the user agent, but there will still be some overhead.
One final point - the only people sho should be worried by the LinkScanner activity are people trying to amnipulate the user journey or infect users with malware. Considering none of them are complaining about this "problem" you can be pretty sure they've already found a way around LinkScanner anyway.
FYI - I am not just some numpty spouting off, before the flaming starts. I'm Head of Online for a marcomms agency and I've been in the industry since '96.
Oh yeah - I choose "Stop". Beacuse I want it to.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
