zeus
msg:748497 | 12:48 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Stargeek it could be great to have a few banners there, but I just can not make it - I suggest any one that is hit now starts to find internet news websites, send them a email about this post, it just have to be a few lines then they can look for themself whats going on, there is no crime in that to offer some info which is very real.
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stargeek
msg:748498 | 12:50 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
an organized aproach on many fronts would be best i think, emailing to smaller news sources, contacts and the bigger ones and a few protests, banners are nothing, if they have to bring cops in to remove people and lock them up for a few hours it would definetly get press.
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crobb305
msg:748499 | 12:51 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
I want to believe Google is working on this problem. One positive is that I have seen the number of tracker2 urls (blamed for most of the hijacking) dwindle. In November, over 400,000 were indexed in Google. Today, only 12,000. Maybe the repair process is just a very very slow one, but I am still very frustrated and very skeptical that my site will ever reappear. C
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frritchi
msg:748500 | 1:06 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
If you are looking for Wall Street exposure, here is a link to well known financial analyst with a daily column who has made a name for himself pointing out that the crowd is wrong and why. He may be interested in saying that the crowd is wrong about google due to technical issues (plus he is on the MSNBC payroll, which may help) [moneycentral.msn.com...]
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stargeek
msg:748501 | 1:29 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
google is using 302 redirects from thier SERPs. does this mean something? is this a slap in the affected webmaster's face? [edited by: stargeek at 1:46 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2005]
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stargeek
msg:748502 | 1:31 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
also, someone should write a press release that we could take a distribute, someone with press release writing experience to write something simple that clearly and dramtically explains the issues.
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crobb305
msg:748503 | 1:55 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
I think the problem with press releases is lack of factual information. While we believe most of what we are discussing to be fact, editors may view it as hypothetical/theoretical. I am not sure how I view it. I certainly feel there is enough evidence to support the hijacking claims. The question in my mind is why would Google simply not do anything, and brush it under the rug? Yahoo was able to resolve the problem in a matter of weeks in early '04. [edited by: crobb305 at 2:11 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2005]
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mitsu
msg:748504 | 2:04 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
the plot thickens
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incrediBILL
msg:748505 | 2:07 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
302 hysteria heightens - block all 302s, forget links from Yahoo, Google and MSN will sustain you.
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japanese
msg:748506 | 2:32 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
IncrediBill,
Good point. I was hoping nobody brought Yahoo into this, This does seem at first glance to contradict all of what this thread is about. and it was inevitable that a keen eye spotted it. But wait, there is an explanation.
All the more reason that google should rectify its problem with the 302. And certainly remove any undue penalties for duplicate content regarding innocent websites.
I have not seen any damaging yahoo redirects. In fact, Yahoo acknowledged and took steps so I would imagine that their scripting is efficient and done in a proper manner. Not only that, they would use industry standard servers or better with programmers who are aware of serverside issues. Most of the damaging redirects emanate from independent servers where anybody can haphazardly manage them with websites residing in them in the hundreds. Each within the server can push out damaging directives. I don’t think Yahoo is out to cause any damage. In fact, at the moment Yahoo is the only real big noise that has addressed the issue of the 302 redirects.
Back street hosting companies with fancy looking websites that give the impression that an army of server engineers work there providing a 24 hour service are the places to look for badly configured serverside issues. When you try to contact these busy looking hosting companies many are manned by a sleepy single individual who may not even know that googlebot has a problem with 302. Talk to them about this issue and the reply maybe “you what mate”. You would most certainly have knowledgeable people at Yahoo who would reply that they are well aware of the issue and their system is checked out by the best engineers in the business.
I created my server myself and it is old and totally customized to conform to no standard. God only knows how it keeps going, day and night.
I would not expect to see yahoo create a meta refresh and a deliberate attempt to manipulate googlebot. I would however expect them, being a big and trustworthy company, to generate all sorts of things during a click process. This is not an issue and they have every right to run their business they way they want to. This forum also uses a redirect process where needed, I have never come across a problem associated with it, though it may not have been exploited. And who is to say that Yahoo’s method of redirect is not exploitable. So long as website owners are not damaged by it nobody will raise any dust. We may find that there exists a loophole in the Yahoo system, time will tell and maybe some blackhat gurus are already on the job.
For instance, draw results in yahoo if indeed a 302 benefits the target site with a multiple keyword that draws the most results for a given website, submit the results address to googlebot if it benefits your site. We all knew that one years ago so don’t try it, penalty may await and an automatic dismissal of your entire site. Don’t try to do it to a competitor it will not work.
Well, let us also see, looks like there may be cracks in Yahoo’s armour and it gives results for surfers with all sorts of weird looking redirects that ultimately end up at the target site. Put a wedge in the crack, hammer it and it will split in two.
The internet takes no prisoners, if Yahoo thinks google is having a problem with the 302, well draw your own conclusions.
Addendum to the above.
Let us not drift from the issue at hand. We are talking about deliberate redirects with meta refresh designed to kill sites, and indescriminate and unintentional scripts using go-php, cgi, asp, tracker2, meta refresh, frameset and other destructive elemets and the manipulation of googlebot to create duplicate content pages.
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stargeek
msg:748507 | 3:28 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Its time to organize an attack. I'd suggest a mailinglist for people affected by the 302 bug but I don't want to be seen as spamming or promoting any other site, if people are interested, please sticky me, thanks.
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drall
msg:748508 | 4:14 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Well i cant believe this but one of my pr6 websites which has dmoz and yahoo links and tons of authority and is 4 years old just got nailed by this. Not only has it lost 50% of its traffic 30 days ago which I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why but it has now dropped down in ranking as well going to a pr 5. The exact string you specified actually was found www.blank.com/d/p.php?url=http://www.blank.com%2F The homepage is gone from all rankings and gone from the allinurl command so now i know where the traffic drop came from. Worse yet when I click his link it shows my homepage with a pr0 which but is my website. What can I do about this guys, I am really really upset right now. Drall
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Reid
msg:748509 | 4:15 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
japanese - you seem to know this thing inside and out.
Do you have any advice for webmasters to protect themselves from this type of attack?
Or for ones who have already been hijacked if there is anything that they could do?
Or is the ball completely in googles hands? editd for speeling error [edited by: Reid at 4:18 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2005]
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drall
msg:748510 | 4:17 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
I just found the registrant of the site knocking my site down with this, it is a SEO Firm!
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Stefan
msg:748511 | 4:25 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
By all rights, one should be able to sue G for this nonsense. Post-IPO, I'm sure they're neck-deep in lawyers, of course. No problems here, yet, but I follow all these hijacking threads expecting it to suddenly hit us too. McGoogle, the McMonster of search engines. Any chance of google-bombing Google? How about everyone put a few links on their sites to <a href="http://www.google.com">Spam Engine</a> Maybe Y and MSN will at least do something with it.
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Emmett
msg:748512 | 4:29 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
| What can I do about this guys, I am really really upset right now. |
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Drall, Send email to the site in question to remove the link. If that doesn't work complain to the hosting provider. When it's removed, click the link in the SERPS and see if it goes to their home page. The google removal tool does no good here since it will see the link as alive. Rewrite or add a bunch of text to your home page so it doesn't look like a copy. I had this hit one of my sites in the Feb 2nd update. They took the link down (don't think it was intentional). The link is still in google and the script now redirects it to their home page so I used the addurl tool in google to hopefully get it re-crawled as their site. I Don't know if or when this will work but it's the best I could think of. Good luck
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billegal
msg:748513 | 4:34 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Is one answer to this problem to ignore 302s to a URL if the URL has at least one other link from a page without a 302 (particularly where the other link is from the URLs own site)? Seems like a simple workaround to malicious redirected URLs. And just to frustrate those who 302 that way, pass page rank to the URLs detected this way. Seems like this would work with the RFC and eliminate the incentive for bad 302s. From what I understand though, the 302 site does not actually copy the content from the original site. What happens is that Google attributes the content of the second site to the URL of the 302. Is that right? If so, where is the copyright infringment (who has copied the content without permission)? It seems more of a false designation of origin or trademark type claim, i.e. Google is attributing the source of the content to someone other than its owner.
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drall
msg:748514 | 4:35 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
A seo firm knocked out my website with this, through research I am able to see that they used a shell website to purposely knock out my homepage to get a client of rankings. This is a huge flaw in Google. Japanese is 100% correct, you can easilly destroy another persons homepage in Google with almost no effort to boost your rankings and I am painfully seeing exactly how they are able to manipulate Gbot to do it. He is spot on match. Man I cannot believe how easy it is to do this to G.
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timchuma
msg:748515 | 4:38 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
I have posted my thoughts on this issue to the RISKS digest of computer security issues. It might be useful if other people do the same so they could elaborate on it. The last time I posted there I had someone from a state newspaper ring my work. Thanks.
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drall
msg:748516 | 4:39 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Thanks Emmit! I am going to give that a shot. I am just in complete shock that one could so easilly destroy another websites rankings in Google.
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idoc
msg:748517 | 4:40 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
"just found the registrant of the site knocking my site down with this, it is a SEO Firm" Once SEO was a art... and it involved finesse and skill. Now it is predominantly black hat. There was a time only the lowest of Internet life forms i.e. the adult industries used overtly deceptive methods to lure clicks to their sites. Now everybody is or wants to be in the clicks business. Yes, you would think Google could handle this as well as Yahoo has... but... Maybe what needs to happen here is a good ole fashioned black eye to the SEO industry and not Google. Maybe SEO firms should require licensing and bonding to cover potential damages and to force responsibility. As many have noted Google IS handling 302's as the RFC's originally intended... as temporary relocated url's. There is really no difference between 302'ing someone else's work to a domain you control and outright cutting and pasting it if you go by the letter of the RFC's.
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DaveAtIFG
msg:748518 | 4:44 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
In my experience, two steps will make your site hijack proof:
1. Use absolute addressing.
2. Use a redirect on your site from www.example.com to example.com OR from example.com to www.example.com (to insure your site only appears at one URL). Use a 301 response code for this redirect. (You should be doing this anyway to insure your PR isn't split between example.com and www.example.com) From what I have seen, SEs have always REPLACED a URL in their index when the URL returns a 301 Moved Permanently response code. Until recently, SEs seem to have ADDED a URL to their index when they encountered a 302 Moved Temporarily response code. Obviously, adding a URL, when considered with the problems claus outlined in #54, explains how hijacking happens at Google. I first became aware of page jacking circa 1998, it's not new, it's simply become fairly common recently. I haven't yet heard of a site successfully page jacked that uses the steps outlined above, although I have seen a few attempts. I'm not saying it can't happen, simply that I haven't seen it done successfully. Will implementing the steps I suggest, "unhijack" your site? I don't know. I suspect it will, eventually. But if you've been waiting a year or more for Google to "fix it," you have nothing to lose by trying those steps. Added a bit of text for clarity, hopefully :) [edited by: DaveAtIFG at 5:28 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2005]
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Emmett
msg:748519 | 4:45 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
From what I understand though, the 302 site does not actually copy the content from the original site. What happens is that Google attributes the content of the second site to the URL of the 302. Is that right? If so, where is the copyright infringment (who has copied the content without permission)? It seems more of a false designation of origin or trademark type claim, i.e. Google is attributing the source of the content to someone other than its owner.
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From what I understand you are dead on. A look at Googles Webmaster FAQ shows: Fiction: A competitor can ruin a site's ranking somehow or have another site removed from Google's index.
Fact: There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design. I just noticed the word ALMOST in there.
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rfgdxm1
msg:748520 | 4:50 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
>I just noticed the word ALMOST in there. By a competitor successfully spamming the SERPs, they could push down the ranking of the competition. This by definition is harming the rankings.
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Emmett
msg:748521 | 4:52 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
| From what I have seen, SEs have always REPLACED a URL in their index when the URL returns a 301 Moved Permanently response code. |
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DaveAtIFG, Lets say you redirect from non-www to www but the 302 points to www. How does that tell the Search Engine that anything is wrong with the 302 url? Maybe it's just late and I'm confused.
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Eric_Winter
msg:748522 | 6:15 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
With respect to generating a press buzz: Where's SEMPO on this? Would SEMPO want to take a stand? I think it could be a galvanizing issue for them. Raising awareness on the problem of page jacking for small and medium business owners could help elucidate what the organization stands for (could stand for) . . . They should weigh in on this and try to get the engines' attention. "SEMPO is a non-profit professional association working to increase awareness and promote the value of search engine marketing worldwide. The organization represents the common interests of more than 315 companies and consultants worldwide and provides them with a voice in the marketplace." Are they hamstrung because of their reluctance to judge blackhat v whitehat? Can't they take a stand that there is something wrong with the playing field when one site can so easily grab another site's traffic? That's a role that I'd like to see them play, i.e. try to be a whistle blower on big problems with the engines algos. That to me is consistent with "promoting the value of search engine marketing".
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Beachboy
msg:748523 | 6:26 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
I like that idea, Eric. :)
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lovethecoast
msg:748524 | 6:26 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Maybe I'm misreading here, but wouldn't having your server setup to never deliver a 404 solve this issue?
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stargeek
msg:748525 | 6:34 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
yeah eric, seems like sempo members should be screaming about this.
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larryhatch
msg:748526 | 6:35 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
Unless I'm WAY off base, 404 (page not found) issues have
nothing at all to do with 302 (content moved temporarily)
type page/PR/content jacking. -Larry
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larryhatch
msg:748527 | 6:54 am on Mar 10, 2005 (gmt 0) |
OK. Agreed that Google MUST fix this. In the meantime, is there ANY way do disallow 302 redirected
traffic, using htaccess rules or whatever, to disallow traffic
to my site from a 302 temporary redirect? I'm not asking if its smart (probably dumb for most sites)
but just whether there is a way or not. -Larry
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