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]
Hope you fare out well - best to ask google guy how long it will take to correct.
I don't recommend the use of the remove url tool.
It's too risky and not worth it.
Also as Google Guy said it was not designed for this purpose.
I think if you suspect a 302 problem it's best to follow the correct path and email google.
In your case it might help to do two things.
Submit your website in the add url page and also email them of your troubles.
Maybe they can help - in my view point they should have addressed this board early on so people would not have reverted to trying these methods that may do more harm than good.
I have a viewpoint which is different than many regarding the secrecy that Search Engine use as an excuse to keep from letting out information.
I think a SE should inform those that list more info on what not to do and what's best to do.
I don't go along with the policy this info will be abused by spammers.
Vin
There must be some sort of standard defining what a SE compliant web site should look like. And not just for google but a generic standard across all search engines. W3C claims to lead the Web to its "full potential". Maybe they should be the one who assume the role of standard keeper. There must be a publicly accepted standard that is not easy to abuse. Secrecy is not the way of the future IMHO.
<I described my situation in greater details hoping for a slim chance of GG noticing and actually doing something about it.>
GG has mentioned that he is trying to help fellow members in your situation. However after a busy last week he decided to take the weekend off
I guess... he shall show up in this thread soon relaxed and glad to help ;-)
I got ANOTHER deep crawl today (80% of pages). This makes the second time since Thursday--which was the first time in months. Maybe some positive changes are taking place as you said, despite my recent drop in pagerank to 0.
Wait and see.
Chris :)
>> ASP - response redirect
AFAIK, an IIS response.redirect is equal to a 302 redirect on an Apache server. Specifically, the server header would look something like this (omitting a few header variables and including the html-part of the server response):
----------------------------
HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Location: http //www.new-domain.co.uk/
<head><title>Object moved</title></head>
<body><h1>Object Moved</h1>
This object may be found <a HREF="http //www.new-domain.co.uk/">here</a>.
</body>
----------------------------
You really don't want to do that, as it signifies that the move is temporary, not permanent. That is also most likely the reason for your problems, as by doing that you have probably hijacked your new domain. If you had made a meta refresh in stead, chances are that you would have done the same.
My suggestion:
Remove the response.redirect and put a static page up with this content in stead:
----------------------------
<html>
<head>
<title>Page moved</title>
<meta name="robots" value="noindex,follow">
</head>
<body>
This page has moved to <a href="http //www.new-domain.co.uk/">www.new-domain.co.uk</a>.
Please update bookmarks and links.
</body>
</html>
----------------------------
Check in a server header tool that it returns a status code of either 200 OK or 304 Not Modified. You don't need any meta tags.
You could also
Implement a 301 redirect, which is "Moved permanently". This will make all the Search engines understand that your site has moved permanently. Unfortunately i have no idea how to do this on IIS.
You should not:
What you should not do is to take down the ".com" as Google thinks that this is the real location for your domain. You should not serve a 302 or meta refresh either.
I have been using 302 redirct from the domain registrar but my rankings have gone way down..
Almost any hosting company runing Apache and mod_rewrite will do the job.
You just need to create a .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [new-example.com...] [R=301,R]
www.example.com - old domain
www.new-example.com - the new domain
Okay, I have now implemented this. I also sent you a mail.
Cheers
Vinnie
I was told that your backlinks get removed as part of the process and that they will eventually get counted again.
The party that told me that wasn't sure how long it would take.
But if the bots are a slurping then things are working better then they were.
Yeah I agree. I personally thought that denying entry to the cgi-bin was a good idea for many reasons (many high profile well respected sites do this). As well as needing click tracking stats I also think it is the webmaster's perogative who gets linked to directly and who does not (as long as you are blocking the cgi-bin then the person getting linked to still gets free traffic with no harm). I don't think of that as black hat just freedom of choice for us webmasters. If they link back then you can link directly which yes may or may help their PR (who really knows) - this is one way of possibly rewarding and incentifying. I don't see the problem in this. We are supposed to get links and we are increasingly getting cornered into what is possibly acceptable and what isn't possibly acceptable which limits our powers more and more as well as leaving us in the dark. I think I speak for many webmasters who are trying to do the right thing and are frustrated becuase they don't know what to do anymore.
