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 should emphasize that i wrote "at least one full month" in that sentence. That said, that six-month case definitely doesn't sound normal. That does not mean that i don't believe you - i do. There's probably something else going on here in addition to the 301. I don't know what that might be, but it could be all kinds of stuff, both with or without 302 trouble thrown in.
I read the other thread as well and g1smd's suggestion sounds good to me.
I recieved an email from Google and they stated a few crawl cycles. (Bit vague but I would suggest 2-3 months.) Whether the rankings fully return I dont know - yet.
< I believe in the 302 hijacking problem for various reasons, but the one that 'sold me' is that it explains the yo-yo effect of sites which have been top 10 for years dropping into oblivion, only to reappear near the top and then drop into oblivion again. I can see no logical reason why G would institute an algo that ranks a site highly, then drops it, then ranks it highly again, then drops it again.>
Lets start by a simple question which shall clarify the assumption of the Rotaing Algos which you call "Yo-Yo" effect:
- With the "Yo-Yo" situation in mind, is it possible for any SEO company to present its clients for stable positions of their sites on the serps as a result of the work of that SEO company?
Of course not. Because if you present your SEO work results as a SEO specialist to Mr. Marketing Manager of Widget Trading Inc. at 9 am and run few queries for specific key-words/phrases to demonstrate Widget Trading Inc. position as #10 on the serps, you risk that Mr. Marketing Manager will see entirely different results or even can't find his site on the first 40 serps at 9 pm of the same day or the day after, when running the same queries.
The conclusion might be; its rather difficult or nearly impossible for SEO companies to operate while the rotating algos "Yo-Yo" are in effect.
As a result of above, Mr. Marketing Manager will be forced to start thinking AdWords, and not SEO companies anymore.
And guess for a second who is the winner from all this?
It should be very clear by now for all fellow members involved by one way or the other in SEO/SEM that Google has started a war against the SEO/SEM communities on the 3rd February 2005 threatening the financial existance of the two communities.
And the tragedy is that members of the SEO/SEM communities, Instead of finding solutions to survive, they just keep telling each other; sit tight..wait..and see and several posts on these forum illustrate this unfortunate passive attitude.
>> considered the possibility that your sites have penalties
That angle was new to me until GoogleGuy posted it a while back. I don't remember if it was here, or on Slashdot. I gave it some thought and i think he's probably right in some cases, perhaps even most, but definitely not all. That said, the word "penalty" is the wrong one, as this is not about "spam", it's more like "weakly founded pages" which can mean anything from few links/low PR/new pages, to duplicate issues (www vs. non-www, vanity domains, and such), and probably more.
And... it's only half the picture. Weakly founded is "weakly founded as compared to the script".
The real issue, and the very core of it, is that the redirect script is interpreted as being a page although it is not a page. I've said that a lot of times, but let me add something new this time. First, i just have to say this yet another time: It is not all that has an URL that is a page. Add to this that some pages have several URL's and you get an interesting problem, which we know way too much about by now.
Back on topic: Here's the real deal, again
You know why "site maps", "terms and conditions", "about us", and such often rank pretty high? Because they're linked to from every single page of the site. That way they're pretty strong pages.
Need i say more?
Okay then, you know what you get when you link to a certain script numerous times on every single page of a site, and that script is interpreted as a page? A pretty strong script, that's what.
You don't get your PR5 replaced by a link on a PR2 page - you get your PR5 replaced by a "PRetty strong script". That's what.
Links don't have PR. Pages have PR.
I dumped the 'rotating algo designed to thwart SEO' theory for the 302 theory in explaining the yo-yo effect, because 1) I believe that searchers would see a rotating algo as an unreliable algo, reducing G's traffic in the long run and 2) because it has been my experience that when people make mistakes (such as G and their increasingly crappy SERPs) it is more likely to be the result of error rather than maliciousness.
Of course, the modern corporation generally seems to prefer killing the goose in the name of short term profits, so you could be right...
That spam penalty causes the PageRank of a site to decrease. Since one of the heuristics to pick a canonical site was to take PageRank into account, the declining PageRank of a site was usually the root cause of the problem.
Pointing out in italics that declining PR was the cause and the decline in PR was because the site spammed the SE.
You should also note the use of the weasel word usually, as in NOT ALWAYS. LOL, I've been reading too many court transcripts.
It could just as easily be that the reason that the site "spammed" the SE was because the stupid wetware blew it and thereby caused the software to act as though the 302 belonged to the site that was degraded because of spamming. That site view had until Google changed it recently two or more copies of the pages in question. One under the proper URL and one under the 302's URL. In addition Google's urlconsole gave approval for the removal of the other sites URL from the INDEX by changing the robot meta tag on the targets page.
It sure looks like, sounds like, and works like a duck, so I'll call it a Duck
In any event Google had all of the information to correctly attribute the page to the proper site, the proper site in ALL cases is the TARGET of the 302, that is where the data is and that is also the owner of or licensee of the data.
do the original have a ban? if so it would most likely not be a personal removal, it would be a kind of filter, but why is it still not crawled and indexed fully after the removal of the bad sites, what could be the reason? what does it take to get back to old listings? a fully crawl by googlebot is what one should hope for. Another thing why is it that sometimes your site is back to old ranking in google.com.my for a few sec. in the logs?, for that I realy dont have any clue.
Maybe the only why to get back is to make a collection of all former hijacked sites and still hijackerd/302linked sites in one email, if so I would gladly collect all sites(no bad ones you know what I mean), but on the other hand the must be a logic to this situation after hijackers/302 are removed, to get back in the serps. and not just 2sec. in google.com.my
2) because it has been my experience that when people make mistakes (such as G and their increasingly crappy SERPs) it is more likely to be the result of error rather than maliciousness.>
Agree. But do you really believe that the bright engineers of Google have been busy for 3 months in finding a fix to correcting a programing mistake?
Pls don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there is "maliciousness" involved. Its just a business practice from Google side to boost the AdWords revenues.
On advice of many guys on here and one in particurlar who i would like to thank ( i have just sticked him personally), i have know removed my 302 redirect in favour of a 301. I have to point out that when i ran site:mydomain.com it only showed www results so i dont think i have a problem even thoe my traffic dropped by 80% on the 23rd of march. Ill let you know if it comes back.
i sure hope i have done the right thing.
Cheers
In the case of a truly hijacked page, the cached content is identical to your content (and how can one get a "valuable clue as to what is wrong with your site" from that?) and the actual page content is often nothing more than a fast meta refresh. Once again, not much chance of "valuable clues".
I have looked at hundreds of instances of 302 redirects where a page shows in the other site's cache, including some from PR9 sites. However, in most cases the pages still do just fine, except in the cases where the site the page belongs to most likely has been penalized.
The valuable clues come from analyzing why some pages from these redirect pages "get hijacked" while other pages, subject to the same redirect code, do not.
