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]
< email quote explaining that there's almost nothing someone can do to harm a site, that dogboy could contact the other webmaster, that pages and rankings change often and that they don't guarantee listings >
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That was a response to my 1000 character email pointing out that when they search for MY url, the result is a site which has my title and description on someone elses URL and when you click on that URL you go to my site..... which, by the way is no longer in the index.
How could anyone respond to a letter like that with "Please note that there
is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your
site removed from our index."
ahhhhhhhhh sorry Google, the emporer has no clothes. I wish I was a lawyer so I could just sue them for fun of it. Obviously THAT site isn't associating MY content with THEIR site.... so it must be GOOGLE associating MY content with ANOTHER author. And I've already asked them once in a DMCA not to to do that.... yet they seem to insist that they are within in their right to publish my information and give credit to some other company.
[edited by: ciml at 9:45 am (utc) on April 27, 2005]
[edit reason] Email quote summarised. [/edit]
Im not sure why it is so important for google to show they got "8mill" sites indexed, personaly I dont care I just want to find my stuff and with that I had no problem before they added all this crap files/sites, the hijacker and 302 realy took of when they added all those new "sites"
Im not sure why it is so important for google to show they got "8mill" sites indexed, personaly I dont care I just want to find my stuff and with that I had no problem before they added all this crap files/sites, the hijacker and 302 realy took of when they added all those new "sites"
For the sake of the shareholders, apparently, Zeus. It would be interesting to find out how many of those 8 quadrillion pages are unique, and how many exist only in the mind of G.
Courage, Dogboy. Astounding that they still maintain the "almost nothing a competitor can do to your site" nonsense.
What were you expecting?
Your automated response for Google is exactly the same email most of us got 4 months ago when GoogleGuy last told us to report canonical/302 Redirects/Hijacking issues.
rjwmotor {post #357}: Get the site-wide non-www to www 301 redirect in right away, if not sooner.
nickied: {post #360}: After just 10 days all the www pages had gained a title and description, and the number of non-www was falling rapidly. A week later the latter increased massively, and has taken another month to fall back down close to zero again.
The only pages with titles and descriptions are www pages. All the www pages have titles and descriptions. None of the non-www pages have titles and descriptions.
dogboy {post #361}: I am not sure what is going on with Google responses, but their quality is very low, and the answer usually has nothing to do with the question that was asked.
I have several friends who all had one particular problem with their sites. They all had the same problem (to do with supplemental results, actually). All four of them sent in the same question, with the exact same wording (except for the URL), and all sent in on the same day. The responses received were "definately yes", "yes", "no" and "definately no". Two of those replies were definately wrong: and could be proved to be with reference to the SERPs after the other two sites had their listing adjusted by someone at Google (the other two replies said that they never do this).
All of the sites I've cleaned up have come back to their old rankings even though the scrapers and redirects are still there. The scrapers and redirects ranking higher were a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The cause was that some of my sites had attributes that caused the sites to lose page rank. (The real page rank - not the one they show on the toolbar).
I'm one of those who hasn't had any problems with the 302 stuff, but I can sure sympathize with those who have.
That's pretty much what my stance is.
I still do not believe there is a 302 problem.
I have seen nothing that has shown me one exists.
I do know google has made a change in January.
That change has effected my site and I am betting most of those who are beating this 302 drum are really being hit by that change.
I think if there was ant truth to this claim of a 302 problem it would be news in the major websites already.
I think it would be written up by Danny and would be on this website [searchenginewatch.com...]
But it's not there - nothing on a problem of 302.
That tells me they don't see this as being real.
I have an open mind but have yet to see this in circles where the pros are.
I have also not heard the google guy said there was a 302 problem.
I think this board has caused more harm than good.
Those that follow wind up following it to the total death of their website.
Those that promote the 302 rumor should think about what they are doing for you have pushed this and have mislead many with faulty information.
With no real knowledge of how Google works you come up with a fictional scenario and claim its true.
A true Pro works with facts and does not act on rumor or possibilities.
Vin
Vincentg wrote:
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.
The use of the removal tool is indeed risky - but only if you make a mistake.
I think they should have an opt-out page, where they show you what you are about to do and then require your confirmation. Instead they just tell you what you've already done. You could alter it though, all you have to do is remove the disallow (that you didn't want to happen) from your robots.txt file before it gets 'approved' and you could prevent any unwanted results from happening.
Googleguy wasn't talking about 302's when he said 'the removal tool was not designed for this purpose'. That's not what happened at all, the removal tool works ,as long as you use it properly. It was not designed for this, but it works if done properly.
added to that is the fact that i wasn't talking about removing a 302 URL in the first place, I was talking about recovering a site that was removed by using the tool improperly.
