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]

[walkman]

"I even received 2 replies from google reassuring me that the site was not penalized"

are you banned (as in NOT on the index) or just have bad rankings? Two very different things...

[joeduck]

Walkman -

Regarding Google support telling us "no penalty":

We did NOT lose home page but did appear to lose about 100k indexed pages of about 350k total (though frankly I'm increasingly skeptical about learning much from "site:oursite.com"

Some are back in index now but Google traffic remains at about 5% of pre Feb 2 level. Yahoo traffic fairly stable.

Shurik -

I misread what you meant with that question mark. You had the mark in your robots.txt as in this: "disallow /?"

I don't know how the bot would interpret that instruction. If your site is completely gone it appears it ignored the question mark. Search for "robots exclusion protocol" for details on syntax.

[Shurik]

walkman, the site was completely gone in 3 days. From 2000 unique and indexed pages to absolutely nothing. Funny thing is that i still receive referrals from google images. And i think the links from my site are still potent since i just build another site and put a link to it from a front page of my de-listed site. Within 3 days new site ranks well for targeted non-competitive terms.

As for "Disallow: /?" - i have read the specs before attempting to do it. Nothing special was mentioned about "?" character. And google's extended robots.txt syntax does not mention any special meaning of "?" either.

[Jazzy]

I think google is now just a piece of dung for black-hats to toy with. 302ed or not (I really don't understand all this) A hobbie site of about 1000+ pages I've updated for years is completely gone practically overnight. Was getting about 2000 google search hits a day. Don't even see it when I type the url.
All I see is hundreds of spam pages from site snippett cutters/stealers listed, with unique sentences and words stolen from my pages. Same thing when I type in last months key-phrases from my log files.
These listings that now show up are not even websites, just coppied junk from hundreds of sites, with redirected stuff or other peoples sentences hidden.
In the last year or so this engine has really become a not so funny joke, with somewhat of a mismanaged monopoly on search traffic. Surely better things are comming.
The old google was actually pretty good, but I think spammers and bloggers really whacked it and its like a dying dog now.

[Shurik]

Yep, link popularity would be a good idea for an ideal world. I think google should stop patching what cannot work in real world and move on to something radically new. Innovate or die!

[g1smd]

>> >> "Where did the additional 9 600 000 entries come from?" << <<

>> For starters, addurl, updateurl, applytoedit, reportabuse, editcat "pages". <<

No. Definately not. Those are all disallowed by the robots.txt file and they are not indexed.

[walkman]

what's Google's response time for "am I banned" type questions? Just the yes or no.I remember reading it was about a week or so. Still the same?

[steveb]

"No. Definately not. Those are all disallowed by the robots.txt file and they are not indexed."

Actually yes, definitely. You should know by now that *indexed* means nothing to Google. They count URLs.

1.28 million "pages" in the Google index due to the report abuse link alone:
[google.com...]

[claus]

>> They count URLs.

Exactly. And robots.txt does not keep them from doing this, only from indexing the page.

[g1smd]

I forgot that report abuse is on a separate subdomain. I assumed it was just another cgi.

None of the other pages you mentioned are indexed as far as I am aware. Still another 8 million to go then...