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]
I can confirm that the "jacker" urls within a site view are no longer showing.
I had a sticky from a fellow member who I was working with, he went looking for the 302's I stickyed to him that were showing up as being part of his site.
I also confirmed that the leaches attached to one of our sites also no longer show up in a site: search.
And a certain Drudge no longer has any attached to his site. In fact I looked at 15 sites that I knew about having leaches and they were all gone.
Now is the problem fixed?
I don't know it could just be hidden
I'll be happy to recant when and if my G referals start topping AltaVista referals again.
LOL, nothing like putting it in their face.
I shall have to do some searchs a bit later. There were whole piles of sites that I was aware of that got hit.
I stopped after looking at 15 of them so I don't think we had a hand edit done.
Altough I did tell Google how to cleanup the mess I don't think they would pay a clerk to sit at a computer to hand delete many entries.
When one PHd programmer type could do far more damage automagicly if you get my drift.
If anyone from GOOG should read this: Thanks a lot :)
Now it will be interesting to see at which rate the sites that were hit will surface again :)
My ex-hijecked site does now appear 11th for a seearch for its site name, better than not at all, but not first like it did for four years. Other example searches include going from 21st to out of the top 1000, and 1st to sixtieth.
They may be handling the technical part now, but the damage to their index continues. In the above site's case, it appears this four year old site is being treated as if sandboxed, that is, brand new after the hijacking URLs were removed.
If Google do sort the problems with the index will previously established sites be sandboxed.
6 Visitors from Google for one of my sites today :( - Lycos brought more visitors.
I also confirmed that the leaches attached to one of our sites also no longer show up in a site: search.
Now is the problem fixed?
That would be a big relief!
However I spotted something else today while trying to figure out what exactly is happening on a site I manage which I will call "target site".
I was checking the ranking of the site name for the target site with a tool that gives the Google ranking for keywords and found a PHP redirect to the site in the results, instead of the target sites site name, and it's ranking #62 in Google.
I checked the Site: and Allinurl: commands and nothing there.
But the site, while it is fully indexed and has been since early January, and has at least 50 quality links, is not ranking for it's major keywords in Google and particularly it's site name (but is doing fine in Yahoo) and the site is almost 6 months old. By now it should be ranking #1 for at least the site name. And thus my suspicions that there is a redirect affecting this site.
I checked out the redirecting site and while there is a real URL on the page to the the target site it is NOT an active link, yet there are other links for Comments and votes, and the Site name for this site which all contain a php redirect. SO I'm wondering why they purposely added the real URL? Possibly to make it APPEAR legit to the unknowing or for Google to pick up the URL?
So now, along with the above discussion I'm hoping google has indeed removed the redirects from it's index, BUT what if it has just removed the evidence?
I was able to find that site with the redirect by searching google for the site name and looking for #62 in the results. it's still in the results with a redirect pointing to the target site. but it's not in the site: search.
As far as traffic goes my most affected site is doing better than before since the latter part of March.
The newer site is either still sandboxed or not optomized correctly, I get a handfull of referrals each day but my main traffic comes from links there so its no big deal.
What about this then?
A site:dmoz.org search says there are 11 million results, but you can't get beyond 950 results however hard you might try to do so.
What does that 11 million figure represent anyway? There are only 600 000 categories, and 600 000 category charters, and 60 000 editor profiles, and a few hundred guidelines and informational pages to index, making only about 1.2 million real pages.
All they had to do is disallow non-mysite.net URLs from
the results of searches for site:mysite.net.
That's way faster and easier than actually discrediting 302 hijacks.
One indication: site:mysite.net indicates 153 pages.
I get to about 147, and it stopped listing them, saying "similar results were not shown."
I clicked to see the full list. I STILL got 147, and
the "similar results" option disappeared.
What and were are those last 6 links?
That's about how many phony 302's I had previously.
The proof will be in the SERPs, but not in my case.
302s didn't affect me that badly once I got some kicked out. -Larry
