SERP Replaced by Another Site Having Same Title

[webjp]

Hi,
My site which was listed search engine position #6(google) was replaced by some other site (the other site is nowhere to be seen hence the term replaced) which has the same title and description and it is redirecting to 3 sites on rotation.
Firstly how is this possible i.e how can one "replace" an existing listing?
How can I rectify the situation.
Doesnt google disallow pages which redirect and why is this showing up?
This phenomenon started 15 hours back and it has persisted.

[ThomasB]

First of all welcome to WebmasterWorld webjp!

There are several possibilities. Possibly your competitor has copied your site and links to them from high-PR links. Google normally displays the site with the highest PR and sees other sites as copies. Normally you can check this by searching for "cache:www.yourdomain.com"
If it shows "This is G o o g l e's cache of [yourdomain.com...] duplicate content is not the problem.

If you want, sticky me the URL and the keyphrase and I'll have a look into it.

[DVDBurning]

I just experienced a similar problem, where I found that a result in the SERPs was identical to mine. An unscrupulous webmaster had copied my entire site, posting it to his site in a folder one level below the root (Example - his-site.com/widgets/index-1.htm) Every one of the copied pages was identical to mine, except all references to my domain were replaced with "his-site.com/widgets". Since the titles and descriptions of each page were identical, the SERPs results were identical to mine. At first, when I clicked on these results, I got a completely different page. Then I noticed that every copied page immediately redirected to a common home page for this site.

If this is your case, you can prevent the redirect when viewing these pages by placing the domain in your Internet Explorer's restricted zone (Tools.. Internet Options... Security... Restricted Zone). Make sure the settings for the restricted zone are default high security, or if you use custom settings for this zone, make sure Meta Refresh is disallowed.

I hope this is NOT the case for you, as it was no joy taking care of it. Today I just got the site shut down for the third time, after it popped up again on a webserver in China. Good luck.

[bignet]

Using Opera as a browser is an easier way to know about a redirect

Try to get more links to your site and that will give you more pr

Google SEO guides against the use of such redirects but there are many in the index

[webjp]

Thanx for your inputs guys, Its been great help to kind of understand what could have gone wrong. For now the issue has somehow been resolved but I hope I can prevent something like this in the future.
I am sorry that I replied late

[pavlin]

Maybe their mirror filter haves something to do with this....

[my3cents]

I had the same problem of a competitor with higher PR coppying our site onto subdomains and replacing our listings. We had our lawyer send them a letter and got them to change the content. Our listing eventually showed back in the serps and their's evetually fell out. I think it's a shame this can happen.

If google continues to allow this... people with high PR could just duplicate the entire top 50 onto subdomains or new domains... it could be taken one step further... add links to known bad neighborhoods and get your competitors websites banned, this way when you are legally forced to take the site down, they will be banned anyway... or... sites that link to the original could be contacted asking to change the url they link to, once the changes are made the original site would have no PR.

I think Google should have a better way of handling duplicate content and protecting website owners from being at risk of this type of pirating. It seems like they should choose the site that has been in the index longer as long as it still has relavant content.

[webjp]

[choose the site that has been in the index longer as long as it still has relavant content.]

Its not a bad idea, I think we should suggest this to google. Because this has become a disturbing new trend and people get away scot free unless some stern action is taken.