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]
Another thing anyone here have a explanation SE related, why a site that has been hijacked or hurt by the google bug 302, dont get spidered by googlebot, when there is no hijacker/302 sites left in a site:search, I dont see any logic here, in a way I dont think its a dublicated filter, because as it looks there is no dublicated sites left in a site:search and contact google to request a respidering is a wast of time as crobb says. It can not be we have to wait to MSN takes over mid 2006.
It has a line of text on there telling poeple site is now at the .co.uk and follow the link.
Hope this works.
Unless there is something I am not seeing, my site appears to be gone forever from Google. Although deep spidered last week, it has gone from pr7 to pr0. All duplications are gone, all 302s gone, content rewritten to account for content theft, etc. A 4 year old site that represents so much hard work and good content.
Okay
I have now implemented NOINDEX,FOLLOW and just a title.
I put in the body website has moved to its new address at allyoursite.co.uk
Is this what you emant or did you mean also add the .co.uk somehow to the meta-tags for it to follow, if so can you be more specific as I have never heard that one before.
Thanks again for your help.
" Is it okay to use redirects for statistics purposes when the redirect
link goes through your cgi-bin AND you block all robots from links to your
cgi-bin in your robots.txt file? "
Some sites use "statistical purposes" as an excuse to hog PR, and much
worse yet, to steal content credit from rightful sites with 302 redirects.
I'm not casting asparagus here, but disallowing the SEs to hide
redirects doesn't make the picture any prettier.
I have a "disallow cgi-bin" statement in my robots'txt file. Why?
It just looked nice, I never wrote a byte into the CGI directory.
I'm going to remove that immediately. I don't want the slightest
indiction that I am doing anything black-hat. -Larry
Let me say it so if I got a total spidering I would be happy, I know this is hard times, because there is not much help out there or folks think you are a spammer, but dont give up, keep a eye on your site:search for other domains or better look at inurl:search because google is now manupulating the site:search, so look in inurl for sites with your title and description and dont panic about all those other domains there thats normal, they just should not have your title and description, but you know that.
If you keep those hijackers/googlebug 302 out of the serps I think you will have good changes, but if nothing happens after that for lets say3-4 month, then its time copy your site to another domain and IP.
You could also be lucky that MSN has taken over by then, but I dont think so, first 2006, but thats a long time to wait.
There is nothing wrong with having a disallow for cgi-bin.
I in fact do that and the reason is I don't want anything from cgi-bin to show up in the SE's.
This is in fact a smart thing to do.
Why give hackers or other clowns out there more info than they already have?
Vin
User-agent: *
Disallow: /airheads
(There are loads of airheads infesting my arcane field) - Larry
