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]
1.http://site.com (no desc)
2.http://www.site.com
Is that a sign of duplicate content penalty? I thought so and made the mistake of removing [site.com...] with google removal tool, which also removed the cannonical one.
If you have more sites with these two listings what should you do to fix that?
There is only a few who have done this incorrectly. Other that did it correctly still seen their whole site drop from the index. There are still the many who didn't do a darned thing and dropped from the index and there are many of athority who didn't do a darned thing and dropped from the index also.
So a select few screwed up and removed their own site so what about the rest. Spam filter? Look at the results for goodness sake! Much scraper spam crap and athorities missing.
1.http://site.com (no desc)
2.http://www.site.comIs that a sign of duplicate content penalty?
I would say no. It seems Google knows they are for the same page, if removing one using the removal tool removes both (almost as if Google treates them as the same url, despite toolbar pr differences--just taking one as canonical and devaluing the other to avoid duplicate appearances in the serps). This was not true of the 302 removals as the 302 urls were distinctly different from the canonical, therefore enabling you to remove the 302 without hurting the intended.
My 4 year old website has always had both versions listed, the www version always had the highest pagerank, and G devalued the other. That would be my logic, but I believe some have used 301s to redirect one to the other just in case. It just seems Google has likely advanced beyond penalizing for having a www version and non-www version in the serps.
C
1. Install a 301 rewrite rule set.
2. Add randomly changing page context and site related piece of content to the pages starting with your homepage.
The first will heal the site and the second will break the duplicate content problem.
Note that number 2 is also theorised (by some folks, not me) to be non functional in the case of a so called 302 hijack.
We are happy with our progress, a large high pr site is apt to have been classified by Google as a spammer so your mileage may depend upon how far along the duplication process is.
You may have to ask Google as noted in msg #116 in this thread by GoogleGuy to reinclude your site.
[edited by: theBear at 7:58 pm (utc) on April 20, 2005]
Let's get this straight. It isn't a "penalty" as such, it is simply that when faced with multiple URLs delivering the exact same content, that they want to only list one of them.
Google chooses one URL to list and drops the others. On the way out you may see some, or all, of the others as URL-only listings for a while.
The wider problem for a site is that page1.html might be associated with domain.com and page2.html might be associated with www.domain.com and so on. This can have consequences for the way that PR is distributed around your site, and you can see such split PR in operation on many such sites.
That is, if domain.com/page1.html links to domain.com/page2.html but for page2.html Google actually lists www.domain.com/page2.html, then that latter page isn't getting any PR from page1.html is it?
You'll see various pages switch allegience from domain.com to www.domain.com, and back, on a random basis, and all sorts of other strange effects.
If one of the versions becomes a Supplemental Result then you could be in bigger trouble. Google does not update the search index or the snippet for those, and your page might start being returned as a result based on old content: for content that is no longer on the real page and no longer in the displayed cache either.
Google used to be able to consolidate listings and merge PR, and used to do this every few months. I haven't seen that happening since at least last Summer.
You can help the situation simply by using a 301 redirect from non-www to www and that will eventually fix the problem.
.
As for removal, it seems that a request to take out anything with domain.com in it also takes out www.domain.com at the same time. Unrelated to the 302 problem that everyone else here is asking about, I have a friend who uses www on all the URLs of his site. In fact the non-www version cannot even be accessed. However, there was a URL-only listing for thesite.com/ in Google a few weeks ago when doing a site: search. I used the tool to get rid of that rogue result and the www index page disappeared too. It's no big deal as it is only really a splash page (sooo 1998) and the rest of the site is unharmed. I'm still wondering where Google got the non-www result from. The URL cannot even be accessed. There is nothing there.
[edited by: g1smd at 7:48 pm (utc) on April 20, 2005]
Did your site completely disappear from serps? When you searched for your company name, where did it rank in the serps prior to making the changes you mentioned above? I have seen my company name jump from position 75+ to position 4. So, there is still some dup penalty issues, despite my changing all the content several times since the first of the year.
C
I have rewrite rules to make all urls canonical with 301s. That's been there for a long time.
I once changed the copy of the home page of one of the sites with the problem. Still no luck.
No the site remained visable but its traffic was sinking fast.
We caught it before it totally crashed.
We had from 2 to 5 copies of 750 pages.
Pre 301 insertion, we also had a number of 302 leaches (a problem I consider completely fixable).
Could cause a trickle down effect and bang whole site is gone.
If google is able to associate with and without www, it seems that they may have associated 302's in some way, then if the 302 goes supplemental they could both go or revert to older associations?
"a particular page returned in the search results might not be a supplemental result for all search queries that it could be returned for".
I hope you are also aware of that.
