Google's 302 Redirect Problem

[ciml]

(Continuing from Google's response to 302 Hijacking [webmasterworld.com] and 302 Redirects continues to be an issue [webmasterworld.com])

Sometimes, an HTTP status 302 redirect or an HTML META refresh causes Google to replace the redirect's destination URL with the redirect URL. The word "hijack" is commonly used to describe this problem, but redirects and refreshes are often implemented for click counting, and in some cases lead to a webmaster "hijacking" his or her own URLs.

Normally in these cases, a search for cache:[destination URL] in Google shows "This is G o o g l e's cache of [redirect URL]" and oftentimes site:[destination domain] lists the redirect URL as one of the pages in the domain.

Also link:[redirect URL] will show links to the destination URL, but this can happen for reasons other than "hijacking".

Searching Google for the destination URL will show the title and description from the destination URL, but the title will normally link to the redirect URL.

There has been much discussion on the topic, as can be seen from the links below.

How to Remove Hijacker Page Using Google Removal Tool [webmasterworld.com]
Google's response to 302 Hijacking [webmasterworld.com]
302 Redirects continues to be an issue [webmasterworld.com]
Hijackers & 302 Redirects [webmasterworld.com]
Solutions to 302 Hijacking [webmasterworld.com]
302 Redirects to/from Alexa? [webmasterworld.com]
The Redirect Problem - What Have You Tried? [webmasterworld.com]
I've been hijacked, what to do now? [webmasterworld.com]
The meta refresh bug and the URL removal tool [webmasterworld.com]
Dealing with hijacked sites [webmasterworld.com]
Are these two "bugs" related? [webmasterworld.com]
site:www.example.com Brings Up Other Domains [webmasterworld.com]
Incorrect URLs and Mirror URLs [webmasterworld.com]
302's - Page Jacking Revisited [webmasterworld.com]
Dupe content checker - 302's - Page Jacking - Meta Refreshes [webmasterworld.com]
Can site with a meta refresh hurt our ranking? [webmasterworld.com]
Google's response to: Redirected URL [webmasterworld.com]
Is there a new filter? [webmasterworld.com]
What about those redirects, copies and mirrors? [webmasterworld.com]
PR 7 - 0 and Address Nightmare [webmasterworld.com]
Meta Refresh leads to ... Replacement of the target URL! [webmasterworld.com]
302 redirects showing ultimate domain [webmasterworld.com]
Strange result in allinurl [webmasterworld.com]
Domain name mixup [webmasterworld.com]
Using redirects [webmasterworld.com]
redesigns, redirects, & google -- oh my [webmasterworld.com]
Not sure but I think it is Page Jacking [webmasterworld.com]
Duplicate content - a google bug? [webmasterworld.com]
How to nuke your opposition on Google? [webmasterworld.com] (January 2002 - when Google's treatment of redirects and META refreshes were worse than they are now)

Hijacked website [webmasterworld.com]
Serious help needed: Is there a rewrite solution to 302 hijackings? [webmasterworld.com]
How do you stop meta refresh hijackers? [webmasterworld.com]
Page hijacking: Beta can't handle simple redirects [webmasterworld.com] (MSN)

302 Hijacking solution [webmasterworld.com] (Supporters' Forum)
Location: versus hijacking [webmasterworld.com] (Supporters' Forum)
A way to end PageJacking? [webmasterworld.com] (Supporters' Forum)
Just got google-jacked [webmasterworld.com] (Supporters' Forum)
Our company Lisiting is being redirected [webmasterworld.com]

This thread is for further discussion of problems due to Google's 'canonicalisation' of URLs, when faced with HTTP redirects and HTML META refreshes. Note that each new idea for Google or webmasters to solve or help with this problem should be posted once to the Google 302 Redirect Ideas [webmasterworld.com] thread.

<Extra links added from the excellent post by Claus [webmasterworld.com]. Extra link added thanks to crobb305.>

[edited by: ciml at 11:45 am (utc) on Mar. 28, 2005]

[joeduck]

GG thanks for input - very helpful.

Regarding canonical page identification:

Our site is very large and spread over several domains and we've had serious canonical problems recently (we think we have fixed them with 301s)

Should we consolidate under 1 domain to make it easier to be spidered correctly?

[crobb305]

Yeah, I am confused about the reinclusion request suggestion too. My website is still in the index. Home page there with title and desc. PR7. The internal pages indexed by url only. The Googlebot grabs the index page everyday, and even grabbed an internal page and indexed it with title/desc last week. Yes, the pagerank declined last Sept (to pr0 as I mentioned above), but it increased in Dec.

I went ahead and sent a reincl request. I imagine I will be told the site is indexed, but I guess it wont hurt.

C

[Marval]

howiejs - and others - I believe the correct procedure these days to get word to Google for a reinclusion request is to use the form at www.google.com/support/ and use a subject of reinclusion request - GG - please correct me if Im wrong

[GoogleGuy]

howiejs, the addurl form is not the same. Start at google.com/support . We recently revamped our support infrastructure to start more with web forms than with emails. I think the url you want is [google.com...]
and then put "Reinclusion request" in the subject line. Tell your site's name and describe any circumstances that you think might have led to a spam penalty, and why they no longer apply. crobb305, I would follow this procedure too.

arubicus, I know that we've been bringing new tools online to trace spam. joeduck, in general I'd say that using one domain rather than many is a good idea, all other things being equal. There's less chances for mix-ups that way.

[Jane_Doe]

The key problem with every instance of hijacking I've seen is pagerank is ignored in judging the canonical page.

Because you are looking at tool bar page rank and not what they are really using internally. I think tool bar PR doesn't subtract for spam penalties.

[crobb305]

GG thanks for all the info. It's been a long time out for many of us (11 months in my case). I think the patience and insistence of all of us to continue to build content speaks volumes. Re-incl request sent.

[Dayo_UK]

Hi GG

Thanks for your feedback.

It is all well for all the site owners who read webmasterworld to use the suggested form - but I assume that in the medium to long term (hopefully relatively short) the use of this form is not necessary as Google will be able to pick up the disappeared/effected sites.

Not everyone reads WebmasterWorld - they should but they dont.:)

[steveb]

"Because you are looking at tool bar page rank and not what they are really using internally"

Nonsense. That has nothing to do with it.

[arubicus]

GG - "arubicus, I know that we've been bringing new tools online to trace spam."

Whoo hooo! Google may have converted me to the dark side of the SERPS. Takes a bow :) Just kidding.

[zeus]

Googleguy - Thats a perfect responce, its nice to hear that you are working on the problem, I also think the most of us know that inurls:search / allinurl:search will includ other domains, if not we will tell them here.

The sad part in my situation is I tried to remove the suplemental results with robots.txt and remove tool, but in that process I forgot a single
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /

where there is no specific page after the /, so now the whole site is gone from google, is there anything I can do to get it back within the 90 days, thanks