stuartc1 - 5:13 pm on Mar 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hi,

I've been using redirects for years, but never once known about this issue.. and I know for certain that many many webmasters use them for no bad purposes. In php the most common script for this is header("location: [somesite.com");...] this I understand produces a 302 redirect, which from what I read hear causes the problems. So its easy to see why many use it with no bad intentions.

One reason (and possible the biggest) people use redirects is to stop PR leakage... for example if you want to link to some page from your high PR site, but do not what to loose some PR to it, the solution would be to use a redirect script. I think google even says this somewhere. This is way people adopt this method...

So now the webmaster cannot win.. link directly and loose PR or link indirectly and risk being called a google hijacker which most people on this thread are calling it :(.

So if nobody can come up with a solution, then you cannot blame anyone apart from google for this.

Sorry, I just had to get some of that off my chest :)