Type %09www into the Google searchbox

What the heck is this?

[Umbra]

If you search Google for %09www, a list of index pages appear with this strange prefix in the URL. What is it?

[ciml]

%09 is a URL escaped tab (tab is 09 in ASCII).

I suspect you're seeing the results of Google following a link made by someone using a visual Web page generator which may URL escape such characters.

If the DNS server for the domain uses wildcards, and if the Web server uses IP based hosting (i.e. non-virtual, ignoring the 'host' header) then this error can occur.

[agerhart]

It isn't helping evidently: [webmasterworld.com...] msg #:78

[bcolflesh]

Interesting scheme:

groups.google.com/groups?q=%2509www&start=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=bf9bhj%2429is%241%40FreeBSD.csie.NCTU.edu.tw&rnum=31

[Umbra]

Not sure what that scheme is about. Most of the sites who have this %09www are Coming Soon or Under Construction sites -- is their a relationship?

Yes, we have some pages listed in Google's cache with this prefix, but I can't understand why. Doesn't appear in our web logs.

[bcolflesh]

Folks are using this to mask their links in html (spam) emails - check some of those domains on the various blacklists.

Your helpful information guide to the innerweb.

[raidersfan]

Try checking the backlinks, there is probably a poorly coded link out there somewhere. There was a thread on this awhile back also. I had a similar situation awhile ago and tracked it back to a inbound link that did not have a space between the url and the target="_new" in the code.

[raidersfan]

Here is the thread I was thinking of:
[webmasterworld.com...]