webdude - 1:03 pm on Sep 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

Sorry I had to leave this thread this weekend. I had pressing business to attend.

First of all, please no more sticky mails unless you are a mod or senior. I will not answer any more. I am not going to give the URL of the offending sites. As stated before, I need someone with a bit more knowledge then I to take a look at the offending sites to determine if this is a click-through scam or not.

Secondly, and I find this odd, but it might just be the fact that indexing in Gooogle has gotten so slow, The offending site that originally had the meta refresh now has a 302 redirect, yet my site's title remains listed in the SERPs at the same position as it was before, only the link goes to the offending sites home page via a 302 redirect. I was able to remove my link which got rid of the meta refresh, but the 302 remains. The site in question allowed me to remove my link via a login and password and that got rid of the meta refresh, but there has been no change on the 302 as of yet. This link still occupies the postion MY SITE used to occupy.

Thirdly, I did not intend this thread to deviate into the legal ramifications of what is happening. I really don't believe that Google intentionally is doing this. I think it is just a bug that needs to be fixed. Quickly.

Fourth, I would just like to get my site back in the SERPs again. As stated previously, the only way I rank higher then the offending site is if I search for my title. I do come up #1 for that search, the offending site comes up #2. No other searches for ANY of my key phrases lists my home page. I do get a return on some sub pages of mine in the 500's.

Now to answer some questions posted here...

ownerrim

also, was wondering if periodically varying the wording of the index page's title might help.

No, it doesn't help. Varying the title changes the title shown for the offending site also.

ownerrim

I wish I understood these issues better but unfortunately I don't. The hijacker duplicates a page and then inserts a meta refresh tag to redirect back to the original page, right?

No. The hijacker doesn't need to do anything except the meta refresh. Some others here have answered this better then I, but the page that gets hijacked does not need to be duplicated at all. It seems the function of the meta refresh gives credit to the site that has the meta refresh. There is no copy of the page on the offending site, just a meta refresh.

Look...

If site A has a meta refresh to site B, Site A gets credit for all the backlinks and PR that would normally go to site B. It's that simple. Why, however, PR does not seem to make a difference as to why site A is listed first, I do not know. This is just what happened to me.

So how do you check if your site is hijacked?

Simple.

Search for your site. If a link in the SERPs that shows your page title(you can check by running your mouse over the returns) goes to another site, you might have been hijacked.

If you click on that link and it goes to your site, you might have been hijacked.

Copy the link and run it through an HTML checker. I am not going to recommend which checker to use, but use one which shows the html of the page you are checking. If the page shows a meta refresh to your site, it has been hijacked.

If you try checking with a header check, it will seem fine because you will just get a 200 page found. That tells you nothing.

If you do a link:siteA.com/metarefreshpage.html, it will show the EXACT same backlinks as your page, even though the only page that exists on the offending site is the meta refresh page.

I have actually given thought of relisting my site back on the offending site again. At least I may increase my traffic because the end result IS my site. But I feel in principle, I need to stick to my guns on this. A meta refresh to my site and any other sites that may be hijacked, is producing SERPs which are not accurate, even though the end result is the same. I wish we could roll back the clock to when meta refreshes were considered bad and sites were penalized for them. Obviously something changed in the algo which is allowing this kind thing. As stated before, these types of threads seem to have started on this forum about the time of the Florida fiasco or soon after, and that may have been the beginning of the problem.

But the real problem is how easy it is to do this, and how rapidly it could spread if not fixed. As I have stated previously, I have 2 other sites that have the same type of problem, however, my pages are still ranked HIGHER then the offending sites pages. BUT these offending meta refreshes are getting credit for all my back links and PR....

Oh Well.