Duplicate content - a google bug?

When Google finds your site through improper redirect it's over.

[FanThomas]

It seems that when Google finds your site through improper redirect like (200 OK with HTTP-EQUIV='Refresh' to your site) then your site is percieved as a duplicate content. Then backlinks to your site are not registered at all, even months after this redirect link has been removed. Any suggestions how to get this penalized site listed?

[benc007]

FanThomas,

Can you explain why a "200 OK with HTTP-EQUIV='Refresh'" to your site would be considered duplicate content by Google?

[FanThomas]

benc007,

Google results to one unique string were two pages: one our original page and one exactly the same looking page with URL of the redirect link. (we have seen this by looking the cached snapshot).

Our original page was placed #2.

We have asked the webmaster to remove our link but it was probably too late.

We have many good backlinks but they are not showing in google. The site itself has PR0.

This situation persists for 5 months.

How can this be possible?

[claus]

The old page (the one redirecting) should not hold the same content as the one it redirects to. Make the old page completely empty, featuring only a link to the new location and the two meta tags, as specified in post #6 here: [webmasterworld.com...]

This will minimize the risk. I'm not sure it can correct it if it's already gone wrong, but give it a try, or try the 301 solution also specified in that post. Oh, and be patient, it's not an instant fix - page relocation always takes time with Google regardless of method.

/claus

[allanp73]

I had something even more annoying happen. Another site links to one of my sites using a redirect. Google show this site instead of my index page. The redirect goes directly to my page but the URL in the serps is the other site. It is super annoying and sometimes the other sites goes down meaning my site is down. I'm not sure what to do.

[claus]

>> asked the webmaster to remove our link

Here are Google's own guidelines on how to get content removed: [google.com...]

Specifically, you can get an individual page removed: [google.com...]

It needs to be your own page, though ;)

/claus

[FanThomas]

allanp73:

BINGO!
This is exactly what happened to me. After the link has been removed and the content has been changed, my site appears in the index, but it is PR0 with no backlinks :-(

claus: the annoying redirect link is not in the index since june. But our site is still PR0 with no backlinks showing in the index!

very bad for us :-(

Can somebody help please?

[allanp73]

I did some research into this topic below is the type of link that causes both Inktomi and Google problems (it appears instead of the site's url):
www.site1.net/redirect.asp?u=www.mysite.com

So you once thought other people's links couldn't hurt you well now you are wrong. These types of links are lethal. It seems like the search engines treat these either in one of two possibilities:
1) As a redirect and therefore the www.mysite.com is spam and receives a pr zero
2) Compares the site www.site1.net/redirect.asp?u=www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com and sees them as the same therefore duplicate content and gives the site with lower pr a pr zero. If it happens that the link has higher pr than your site is toast.

I believe it is the second possibility which is what is happening. Now if you are really shading you could go around getting these types of links for your competitors.

[dirkz]

FanThomas, send a reinclusion request to webmaster at google.com. Provide the details you think have provoked the exclusion (if any) and how you fixed it.

You can search for reinclusion request and GoogleGuy with Google on WebmasterWorld to find statements by GoogleGuy regarding this.

[dillonstars]

So you once thought other people's links couldn't hurt you well now you are wrong.

Yes, this is bad news.

Someone else can also trigger a duplicate content alert on my site by adding linking to me like:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/index.asp?a=randomword">

This makes google think that i am making duplicate pages by using variables and triggers a filter... This also happens when people list their own site as a variable for tracking referrals i.e.

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/index.asp?referral=www.theirsite.com">

[Fiver_321]

Soz for being thick, but if this were the case wouldnt almost all sites running affiliate programs with a referer code get dropped from G?

For example I link to a casino site with

<a href="http://www.casinosite.com?mycode=fiver">casino</a>

Would casinosite.com get barred? I am asking because I am setting up my first affiliate program and this looks like something which could damage the sites ranking, as its already well placed.

Cheers
Fiver.

[claus]

The examples posted - are these all meta redirects? Using these two meta tags and a link for the spider to follow?

<meta name="robots" value="noindex,follow"> 
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url=http://www.new-url.com/"> 

Especially the first one is important. I personally use this combination with no problems at all. The target page will get indexed and the redirecting page will drop out of the index.

/claus

[allanp73]

These types of links are annoying. How easy would it be for Google or other search engines to detect them and properly address the URL?

[allanp73]

here is another example of a type of link that causes problems:
www.website.com/ 0,1500,14+59+null+552,00.html