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In yahoo and msn, when i type my abc widget domain name (the full url), it does not exist. Instead, a page that has the same title abc widget (my company name & it gives the impression that it is linking to my url) shows up, but with a slightly different url. Also, when I go to this other site, there is no information about the company except for a flash button. When I click the link, i am re-directed to a page with full of **** porn links. What's going on do you think? Could it be that my site is being cloaked. And, given that this other site does not show up in a google search, could it perhaps be banned by google?
So I'm wondering, am I being cloaked by my competitor? Does anyone know if there is any way I can prevent this from happening? I would like to be listed with Yahoo and MSN, but seem to be blocked by this other company ... sigh!
There is no way for your competitor to "cloak" your site as you suspect. Apparently your competitor managed to get his own page ranked for your site's URL.
I clicked on what looked like a link to my site, and explored the not-my site that came up, and found they were using one of the oldest tricks in the book. They had abcdwidget.com (and other site names) in white letters on a white background. That was in 2001. Since then, my business has grown a little bit and my site's rankings are first-hit and first-page now.
Further imagine my surprise when I discovered, in a separate exploration, that the domain names abcwidget.net AND "my" abcwidget.com are being offered for sale on a reseller's site, for the low low price of $35,000. {insert diet-Pepsi-through-nose sound effect here}
The first situation wasn't really cloaking per se, I guess. All I could have done was write the guy that site was registered to, and I figured that, if he'd do what he did in the first place, he wasn't likely to be willing to undo it, so I blew it off and concentrated on improving hits for my (the real) site.
In the second situation, there was even less I could do. It'd be up to the potential buyer to confirm that the names being offered for sale were really available.
Then Google decides that Someone's site and yoursite.com are the same.
Then mr. Someone starts to use cloacking and send people into his real site.
It was a big pet peeve of mine. What does help is to monitor your server logs for errors. In your logs you see the search spiders... but look for errors within these blocks of gets for scraper misfires... you will probably see requests for paths that you don't have on your server. Ban then one by one by i.p. from access to your server. Check the numbers that generate the misfires at ARIN and if the block belongs to a marketing or seo company... ban them all. Most of them in my case had been from servers hosted at cheap reseller web hosts and residential dsl lines. Though at first it seemed a never ending task... after a couple months I seem to have most of them. While I was at it I also banned the trash bots... name and trademark bots, image bots etc.
I'm brand new to this forum and just want to say Thanks for sharing the valuable info and insight!
I will be monitoring this forum quite a bit now...
barbil
It was not cloaking. Looks like someone has site with high PR. Then mr. Someone was changing code for <HTML>
<HEAD><meta http-equiv=refresh content="0;URL=http://www.yoursite.com"> </HEAD></HTML>
Then Google decides that Someone's site and yoursite.com are the same.Then mr. Someone starts to use cloacking and send people into his real site.
Check this thread...
[webmasterworld.com...]
