[stomachmonkey]

It's a form of a tracking pixel.

One of the metrics that search engines use is how many times your URL is linked to from other sites.

So search engines crawl Pelican and other sites, find the domain name and increase the sites relevance.

It's a scummy technique but also fairly benign, harmless for us.

A lot of times, like in this case, when you follow through to the domain there is nothing there.

I suspect a domain broker, they are trying to increase the value of the domain by increasing it's search rank which justifies asking a higher price for it.