Come on Google, Fix it !!!

[DaveN]

26 days into the month and I have found 22 hi-jacked domains....

when will this madness stop... next month i might just hit all the forums on how to do it properly !

If you can't fix it pay someone Too !

DaveN

[I, Brian]

Hi-jacked domains? Are you talking about use of redirects employing duplicate content?

[DaveN]

I don't want to promote the activity any more than is at this time, but people are aware of it.

and yes meta refresh still can hi-jack....

DaveN

[strategicrankings]

The latest one i've came across is the site of a ebay platinum power seller.
He is selling on an average of $325000 yearly there.

His site has been hijacked and guest what!!! this guy was ready to pay a maximum of 75 bucks to get his site reinstate in Google.

[I, Brian]

Apologies, DaveN - was simply trying to get a handle of the application of the term.

[Robert_Charlton]

A lot of the "hijacks" are probably the inadvertent result of directory click-counting pages. I've been screaming about this problem since August 2003... talked to both Matt and Dan Delutz at SES San Jose about it then and have posted numerous times on WebmasterWorld about it. Anyone could see it could make innocent sites vulnerable.

It sounds like Tim Mayer has a handle on it (yes, Yahoo has had the problem too) and Yahoo has promised we'll see a fix soon. I've yet to hear a single acknowledgement from Google that there is a problem.

Yahoo's stock is publicly traded too and frankness hasn't caused them to tank. Why can't Google fess up and fix it?

[jcoronella]

This problem has been amplified with the de-emphasis of PR in ranking. There are sites ranking with a PR of 4 in competitive areas that used to need a 7 or more. Google has a new measures of what constitutes a site that should be high in the SERPs, but still chooses a 302 war for the higher PR site.

[Nick W]

>>Tim

Latest word on it (yesterday)

It will take a few weeks to be fully implemented but much of the index will have changed already. GoLinks have you noticed any positive changes to your sites yet?

I have not seen the problem near as much in Yahoo as in google.

I have one of those directories.

I have moved heaven and earth to try to stop the using the 302's and only use 301's. But it keeps looking like wasted effort with google.

[iamrussell]

What exactly is the problem? Explain it to me like I'm a three year old.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by iamrussell

What exactly is the problem? Explain it to me like I'm a three year old.

Sometimes, one site can harm another site by the way in which it links to it. More often than not in a purposeful manner.

[powerofeyes]

Hello russell,

you can find a lot of information in this long thread in webmasterworld.com

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/25638-1-10.htm

[Dave Hawley]

According to lots0, who I have been told is someone to take heed of, Google cannot be tricked into doing what it is designed to do, so how is this even possible?

[I, Brian]

It's simply playing on what Google is designed to do - more specifically, one of the common filters. That's why DaveN in the original post implores Google to fix this issue.

[Robert_Charlton]

Here's probably the most succinct thread on WebmasterWorld summarizing the various redirect issues. Message #8 has a good set of "Redirect Bug" links...

What about those redirects, copies and mirrors?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23743.htm

With reference to meta refresh redirects, here's a link to my Aug 2003 thread, with a couple of my summarizing comments...

Banner ad redirect-page indexed as mirror site by Google
Google getting overly aggressive in its indexing?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/16069.htm

We're not supposed to be responsible for who links to us, but Google's indexing like this certainly makes us vulnerable to whatever scheme any other site decides to use....

What's bothering me here, though, is that Google is taking a meta refresh redirect page (from one domain) and assigning to it the title and content of the page it redirects to. That this happens to be the result of a spidered banner ad only highlights to me that this is a bad indexing policy.

[Nacho]

Thank you Robert, those are good references.

Does anyone here want to take a shot at why Google might be doing this if it was for a good reason (even if we don't like it) by stepping in this search engine's shoes? Perhaps we can understand this madness by doing the exercise???

[Dave Hawley]

So it is tricking Google into passing PR then?

[Marcia]

lots0

I have not seen the problem near as much in Yahoo as in google.

Yahoo is dealing with it, and solutions are being implemented. Latest word on it over here

Yahoo, Redirection and Disappearing Sites

[GoogleGuy]

I heard that Matt asked pretty heavily for examples at the WMW conference and only got one concrete example. If people want to send specifics (i.e. "site A appears to have duplicate pages from, or is doing a 301/302/whatever to site B, and Google is wrongly picking site A as canonical", with actual values for A and B), I'd be happy to hear them. Drop an email to webmaster [at] google.com with the keyword "canonicalpage" (all as one word) and I'll ask someone to collect the feedback and pass it on to an engineer. Being extra clear will help us with any feedback you send, e.g. "The correct site is somedomain.com, but if you do the query bla, you'll see that such-and-such.com shows up instead."

[strategicrankings]

Originally Posted by Dave Hawley

So it is tricking Google into passing PR then?

Not only PR Dave, but backlinks too. I made a test recently with a PR0 disposable domain. Guess what!! after next crawl it had a PR5 and same number of and same backlinks as the "victim domain".
In that case none of the domain were removed from Google's cache however.
By now i've already reversed the situation and the disposable domain has got down to PR1 and lost all the backlinks except one which it genuinely has.