Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
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]
Just a suggestion - wouldn't it be a good idea to have a request form to get the status of a website?
One that will tell the website owner if he has been issued a penalty and why.
Would be nice if one can see that a website linking back has caused a problem or if the owner has a coding mistake.
I am sure Google and other SE's can do this.
I am also pretty sure few would mind paying a small fee for such a service.
The Fee would make it worth while for Google to go through the trouble of checking a website's problem with ranking.
Everyone wins this way - what do you think?
Vin
wouldn't it be a good idea to have a request form to get the status of a website
It would be easy to abuse the system. First you SEO a site until it falls off the SERPs. Then you use the request form to see what caused the SPAM trigger. You adjust those problems and do a reinclusion request. Trial and error until you have found the optimal settings.
Google tries to keep their ways of detecting SPAM secret. With such a status form it would be very easy for SEOers to disassemble the algorithms and overload the SERPs with junk sites.
Small problem I think.
Vin
He has 302 linked his site to one of mine.
This will be a good test to see what happens.
Any ideas on link code would be great to be sure we are doing it right.
Any input will be welcome.
Vin
their anti-spam algo would be cracked in a month.
Thanks for posting in this thread. We've felt pretty abandoned lately without your input.
I checked my own site on the site command for 302s and they do appear to be gone, however those same URLs are still in the allinurl command and that is ALL that ever appears there (except for links to two of my pages) and I have over a thousand links coming into my site (according to Yahoo).
I manage 27 websites. I checked several that had been hit by these redirects and while the redirects have disappeared from the site command, as you said, the SAME URLS are still in the allinurl command just like they were before.
They may be harmless tracking links but how are we to know this if we're not programmers?
You answered "yes" to larryhatch's question "Will the 302-jackers be derated if not penalized?".
Is there now a way to tell a hijacker link from a legitimate redirect link from another site? It's my understanding that some of the current directory scripts use 302 redirects for tracking purposes when linking to other sites. I'm worried that sites using these scripts will now be seen as hijackers and get penalized.
"We changed things so that site: won't return results from other sites in the supplemental results."
Can we take that to mean that the url's are really gone from the index now... or simply that we can no longer use the site: search to check for these url's anymore.
Again, if you still see any problems please report it at google.com/support with the subject line of "canonicalpage" so that the engineers can investigate remaining reports. If your own site isn't doing that well, consider doing a reinclusion request as well.
