Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Many unethical webmasters and site owners are already creating thousands of TEMPLATED (ready to go) SKYSCRAPER sites fed by affiliate companies immense databases. These companies that have your website info within their databases feed your page snippets, without your permission, to vast numbers of the skyscraper sites. A carefully adjusted variant php based redirection script that causes a 302 redirect to your site, and included in the script an affiliate click checker, goes to work. What is very sneaky is the randomly generated meta refresh page that can only be detected via the use of a good header interrogation tool.
Googlebot and MSMBOT follow these php scripts to either an internal sub-domain containing the 302 redirect or serverside and “BANG” down goes your site if it has a pagerank below the offending site. Your index page is crippled because googlebot and msnbot now consider your home page at best a supplemental page of the offending site. The offending sites URL that contains your URL is indexed as belonging to the offending site. The offending site knows that google does not reveal all links pointing to your site, takes a couple of months to update, and thus an INURL:YOURSITE.COM will not be of much help to trace for a long time. Note that these scripts apply your URL mostly stripped or without the WWW. Making detection harder. This also causes googlebot to generate another URL listing for your site that can be seen as duplicate content. A 301 redirect resolves at least the short URL problem so aleviating google from deciding which of the two URL's of your site to index higher, more often the higher linked pagerank.
Your only hope is that your pagerank is higher than the offending site. This alone is no guarantee because the offending site would have targeted many higher pagerank sites within its system on the off chance that it strips at least one of the targets. This is further applied by hundreds of other hidden 301 permanent redirects to pagerank 7 or above sites, again in the hope of stripping a high pagerank site. This would then empower their scripts to highjack more efficiently. Sadly supposedly ethical big name affiliates are involved in this scam, they know it is going on and google adwords is probably the main target of revenue. Though I am sure only google do not approve of their adsense program to be used in such manner.
Many such offending sites have no e-mail contact and hidden WHOIS and no telephone number. Even if you were to contact them, you will find in most cases that the owner or webmaster cannot remove your links at their site because the feeds are by affiliate databases.
There is no point in contacting GOOGLE or MSN because this problem has been around for at least 9 months, only now it is escalating at an alarming rate. All pagerank sites of 5 or below are susceptible, if your site is 3 or 4 then be very alarmed. A skyscraper site only need create child page linking to get pagerank 4 or 5 without the need to strip other sites.
Caution, trying to exclude via robots text will not help because these scripts are nearly able to convert daily.
Trying to remove a link through google that looks like
new.searc**verywhere.co.uk/goto.php?path=yoursite.com%2F will result in your entire website being removed from google’s index for an indefinite period time, at least 90 days and you cannot get re-indexed within this timeline.
I am working on an automated 302 REBOUND SCRIPT to trace and counteract an offending site. This script will spider and detect all pages including sub-domains within an offending site and blast all of its pages, including dynamic pages with a 302 or 301 redirect. Hopefully it will detect the feeding database and blast it with as many 302 redirects as it contains URLS. So in essence a programme in perpetual motion creating millions of 302 redirects so long as it stays on. As every page is a unique URL, the script will hopefully continue to create and bombard a site that generates dynamically generated pages that possesses php, asp, cigi redirecting scripts. A SKYSCRAPER site that is fed can have its server totally occupied by a single efficient spider that continually requests pages in split seconds continually throughout the day and week.
If the repeatedly spidered site is depleted of its bandwidth, it may then be possible to remove it via googles URL removal tool. You only need a few seconds of 404 or a 403 regarding the offending site for google’s url console to detect what it needs. Either the site or the damaging link.
I hope I have been informative and to help anybody that has a hijacked site who’s natural revenue has been unfairly treated. Also note that your site may never gain its rank even after the removal of the offending links. Talking to offending site owners often result in their denial that they are causing problems and say that they are only counting outbound clicks. And they seam reluctant to remove your links....Yeah, pull the other one.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 9:49 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2005]
the internet is full of 302s, if they alone were the problem it would be a mess
I think so, too. I suspect that at least some of the issues in this thread that people are blaming on 302s and scraper sites are probably more likely due to recent algo changes.
The solution is to wait for them to fix this, like yahoo did or make so noise as we are trying.
If we had a solution in WebmasterWorld Supporters Forum to this or knew anything from google if they are fixing the problem, we would tell you in a min., this forum is no capital forum, here we share.
thank you sorry if i'm getting snippy about this the whole issue is just getting on my nerves, but i shouldn't be taking it out on people who are just trying to help.
We must continue with the pressure. This thread now looks gargantuan. I wonder if Claus can display the number of times this thread has been read.
I wonder if google knows about this thread and the threat that it poses.
This thread now is concrete evidence to google that we know the exact processes that create the conditions for a hijack.
I am creating a page that clearly as possible and in Joe Public language explains the process of the 302 and how a site is hijacked. Including a help process as to the limited things that can be done to rid the hijacking URL's
Where can I possibly load it for maximum exposure?
Any ideas please.
"nce agai its not a 302 problem, the MAIN problem is that google creates sites out of 302 links, so it will be a dublicate, so 100% YES its a google problem and the problem got much worse after they added all those new so cald websites.
The solution is to wait for them to fix this, like yahoo did or make so noise as we are trying."
Have another! :)
Sure it's Google's problem ... Google's the search engine that allowed this [302 highjack] to happen - not Yahoo, MSN, Jeeves, etc...
[edited by: bobothecat at 11:27 pm (utc) on Mar. 12, 2005]
You have the site remove the 302 redirect to your site and >POOF!< you disappear altogether.
Wow - 396 posts beating this dead horse, should've stopped this thread at 302 :)
Where can I possibly load it for maximum exposure?
I'd say put it here and make it clear that it is for republishing.
Together we'll spread it far and wide, various indy media avenues and other things could be used.
Wow - 396 posts beating this dead horse, should've stopped this thread at 302
you sound like you're benefiting from some 302's, or at least haven't been affected yet.
would you like to test it? sticky me or japanese with your main sites URL and we'll send some bot traffic your way if you don't belive it.
I already have 100s (if not over a thoudand) of 302 redirects to my site out of about 5,000+ IBLs.
Hasn't hurt yet.
But the sites I'll probably start swatting are those scraping chunks of my web pages, they are starting to annoy me.
Hasn't hurt yet.
so you belive this isn't a problem?
then go ahead, send us your URLS. if its not a problem you'll just be rewarded with some extra human and bot traffic.
I think this thread will stop at nothing, too many sites have gone down the swannie.
Stargeek,
I am having difficulty putting it in Joe Publics language. Its too heavy a reading for anybody outside our circle to understand. But looks good enough to start pushing it and I will rectify things as I go along. I need a website to upload it. Perhaps a folder called "google-302-hijacking-website" in an existing site. So that we can work on it and promote it.
Bear in mind google will kill the site my information about hijacking is on.
Many sites have been lucky and are not affected, but many are affected and in internet terms and figures that may be in the thousands, maybe higher.
A horrifying thought is that it is getting worse.
then go ahead, send us your URLS. if its not a problem you'll just be rewarded with some extra human and bot traffic.
The reason I'm not buying it 100% is most of the directories on the net large and small use 302s and directories don't dominate the listings. 302 may be related to the problem, but I don't think it's the whole cause.
I need a website to upload it.
why not just post it here, they won't "kill" this site.
