Robert_Charlton - 7:11 am on Mar 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

since yesterday, i thought this thread would have balloned in size. instead, absolutely stunning silence ....

I've been screaming about this for over six months and have gotten no good response. Yidaki describes the problem well, and we are not alone.

I've had several sites hit by variations of this problem.

It's gotten so bad that I won't let the sites I watch over be indexed in any directory that uses a redirect click counting scheme.

This explanation is conjecture, but I think what's happening comes from Google's way of handling two problems... redirected doorway pages, and redirected splash pages. By assigning the content of the destination page to the originating url, they solve both problems... and the arrangement makes sense, as long as the link doesn't jump across domains. When it does cross domains, though, the arrangement is open to a lot of abuse, both accidental and deliberate. I don't think the Google arrangement anticipated the redirects used on click counting pages in directories.

At this point I've written to GoogleGuy, and I discussed the problem with two high level Google search engineers at SES last August in San Jose. At SES, one of the engineers started by saying, 'yes, that's the way we handle redirects,' but after he heard me out, he said, 'sounds like a GoogleBug.'

I've gotten no feedback since, though, from anyone. I'd had a robots noindex, nofollow put on the redirecting page, but the problem persisted for months... then cleared up... then reappeared... and now it's gone... so I have no feeling of security about this type of directory listing.

Without feedback from the engines, it's hard to know what the status is, because I keep reading post after post about the problem.

I should mention that the problem doesn't occur just on Google... it also happens on Inktomi, and I've seen something similar, but not exactly the same, on Gigablast. All with different pages, but the pattern is the same, involving a high PR source page. Since the Google problem, I've had to yank a great directory listing just to get our money page reindexed on Inktomi. Am not sure what happens on the new Yahoo, but I don't want to try to find out.

Here's my rough archive of threads on this, elaborated a bit since I last posted it. You have to read down through some of the threads, but they all sound like roughly the same situation to me. Some are in the Supporters Forum:

Banner ad redirect-page indexed as mirror site by Google
[webmasterworld.com...]
- my original post on this problem.

Our company Lisiting is being redirected.
[webmasterworld.com...]
- elaboration of the problem. Some discussion of Links SQL as one of the problem systems, which uses both a 302 and an HTML page with a meta refresh.

Is using a redirect to track outward bound links bad?
[webmasterworld.com...]
- thread contains some hints for directory operators to prevent the problem, but no relief for the target site.

Google indexing redirect pages
How can I get google to stop indexing redirects?
[webmasterworld.com...]
- another example of the problem, posted by a content site operator

weird link showing up for my site in Web results
how can i change this?
[webmasterworld.com...]
- short thread... I'm guessing another example of the problem

etc etc....

It would be great to get some feedback from both Google and Yahoo on this. I know GoogleGuy is entertaining his family this weekend, but if one of the mods knows how to get his attention, it would be great to have him look into this eventually.

PS... Edit to correct omission.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:56 am (utc) on Mar. 20, 2004]