Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
www.mydomain.com/
Similar pages
In addition, my Yahoo listing disappeared as well. I then did a Yahoo search for pages with my domain included and found most of my interior pages indexed but not my home page.
What happened? Is it possible my site was not ready to be crawled when Googlebot and Slurp robots visied my site - simultaneously?
This is a very "white hat" site - no tricks at all, just good content...
I went and manually requested my site be spidered on both Google and Yahoo, and sent an email to Yahoo requesting any explanation as well.
Is there anything else I can do? Any ideas of why this happened?
When "link.php" querys the database looking for the value "id=42," guess what it finds.
(hint: your url)
<<Should i e-mail this site and ask them to remove the redirect link i found in a search?>>
Sure, they problably will remove it for you. But, Google won't. Why? Because everytime gbot goes back to "link.php?id=42" it finds valid content --yours.
Yes, it is no use to just remove the link. The script URL should return a "404 Not Found" otherwise you can not remove it from Google, and Googlebot will not flag it for removal either.
Claus,
When I had the redirect site remove my link, it now returns their home page. My concern is that if the link is no longer in their links list will googlebot ever re-index it and figure out that its pointing somewhere else now? Should I add a link to their script to my site just to get google to re-index it?
Thanks
Big problem.
You must be able to type the EXACT original url into your browser address window and make sure your page no longer comes up. If it does come up, then that's what gbot will find when it re-spiders the link.
Simply having the offending link removed from the hijacker's page isn't enough. The problem is that the original url is still in Google's database and gbot keeps going back DIRECTLY to it --not via the hijacker's page.
And trying to get it removed via the URL console is no good because it still appears to be a live page to G.
If it doesn't return a 404, gbot won't remove it.
I know USToday had a little about scrapers and adsense so maybe they need a follow up about the lets say HUGE problem with redirecting links
If it doesn't return a 404, gbot won't remove it.
It doesn't return a 404 now but it does point to their site instead of mine. I assume thats ok?
On a related note:
I found another (maybe only) source of my duplicate content penalty. In attempting to 301 redirect my ip address (left over from old setup) to the www site I was using the following code which google never seemed to understand (names changed and spaces added to protect the innocent):
Redirect 301 / http: //www. mysite. com/
I then changed it to (ip changed):
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^123.45.678.9:69
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
This redirected the browser from my ip address just fine and I didn't think anything of it until I put it through the WebmasterWorld Server Header Checker which was returning 200 OK!
So now I updated it to the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^.* mysite \.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
The last entry seems to be returning the proper 301 redirect.
Just thought I would post this for anyone else having a split site problem. Given that 1 dupe offense = 30 day penalty, 2nd offense = 60 day and 3rd = 90 day, I don't expect to see my site listed in google for a long while :(
When I had the redirect site remove my link, it now returns their home page. My concern is that if the link is no longer in their links list will googlebot ever re-index it and figure out that its pointing somewhere else now? Should I add a link to their script to my site just to get google to re-index it?
It's okay that it returns their home page if they are now 302 redirecting to themselves in stead of you.
As jk3210 wrote, Googlebot will pick the link from Google's own list of links at some point and spider it, regardless if it's found on the page or not. I don't know how long this will take, but it could take some time.
If you can enter the exact URL of the script in a server header checker (or in a browser with your User-Agent set to the full Googlebot UA string) and see another site than yours, then this particular link will no longer harm your site once Googlebot gets around to spider it.
You could try speeding things up by submitting the script URL to Google.
So now I updated it to the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^.* mysite \.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
I would use this syntax in stead, but if yours works for you there's no need to change it:
----------------------------------
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]
----------------------------------
www.theirsite.com/world/chinese/web/body/www.mysite.com/?SLANG=zh&TLANG=ja&wb_lp=CHJA
Has theirsite.com hijacked mysite.com? Is mysite.com in trouble?
"Is mysite.com in trouble?"
let's say it can't help you. Google might choose ignore them, you, or hurt both.
www.theirsite.com/world/chinese/web/body/www.mysite.com/?SLANG=zh&TLANG=ja&wb_lp=CHJA
That DOESN'T mean that they have hijacked anything although they COULD have.
The proper search is site:mysite.com and all the urls highlighted in green should be yours if they aren't then you have definately been jacked. On a large site these searchs aren't always easy.
IIRC inurl returns all of the pages that have a ANY type of link to your site, both good and so called bad.
And by jacking I don't mean just violating copyright, partially copying content, or scraping content.
There are too many things that get classified as hijacking.
Also what is the difference between searching for site:mysite.com and site:www.mysite.com?
What is the best way to ask and explain to a webmaster to remove or/and fix a redirect link thats pointing to your site?
Thank you, walkman. I've read that your site has been cloned by excite.co.jp, TOO
I had the same problem, but I was able to get the url removed in Google using their removal tool.
I'm emailing Google with excite.co.jp examples. Can you please do the same. tell them to forward it to the Engineering Dept I guess. This has to stop now. I can't go broke because of this nonsense
We all know that emailing them does no good. An email reader will open and delete the email.
I just can't believe we are stuck with the task of cleaning up Google's mess ourselves (using Google removal tool, emailing other webmasters, rewriting our content to remove duplication, etc). Ridiculous and just plain pathetic.
I use a tracking script to link to outside sites, like this:
[mydomain.com...]
I checked and this does generate a 302 in the header. BUT I am also blocking /dir/linker.php in my robots.txt:
Disallow: /dir/linker.php
Should I change the php script to use a 301 redirect instead of a 302? Or is keeping the script in the robots.txt good enough?
BTW, I'm also doing this to preserve PageRank... since these are not reciprocal links I didn't want to use the standard direct link.
It was February 2005 when I used the URL remover so we'll see what happens in the next update.
I have decided not to go crazy over this situation. I am going to pay more attention to ranking on Y and MSN.
I do have this sneaking suspicion that G will come back to me at some point, like a straying lover who returns with promises of happiness. Question is, will I fall for that old line again...
IMO it's a flaw they can't fix. (if they could fix it, they would have by now).
So any official comment could lead to
-more bad guys finding out about the bug, and exploiting it.
-stock drop.
