Is Your Site Being Abused?

[engine]

Is Your Site Being Abused [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

We at Google are working hard to keep the abused URLs out of our index, but it's important for you to make sure your site is not being used in this way. Chances are you don't want users finding URLs on your domain that push them to a screen full of unwanted #*$!, nasty viruses and malware, or phishing attempts. Spammers will generate links to make the redirects appear in search results, and these links tend to come from bad neighborhoods you don't want to be associated with.

This sort of abuse has become relatively common lately so we wanted to get the word out to you and your fellow webmasters. First we'll give some examples of redirects that are actively being abused, then we'll talk about how to find out if your site is being abused and what to do about it.

[GaryK]

I notice that WebmasterWorld uses the pubcon site to handle redirects. Are steps taken to ensure it's not being abused?

I'm wondering about this because we just installed a similar redirection system on one of our sites so that members can link to other sites without it directly affecting the main site.

We redirect through a domain that we don't care about as it's not relevant to any sort of search engine ranking.

It's what we call a utility domain where various sub-domains are used for things like webmail, stats, link redirection and SSL.

[edited by: GaryK at 6:48 pm (utc) on Feb. 2, 2009]

[tedster]

Google now has a Webmaster Help forum section devoted to Malware and Hacked Sites [google.com].

While this is not exactly the same as a site whose redirect scripts are being leveraged by spammers, it is definitely a part of the abuse that is so rampant right now.

[experienced]

how to protect the site from these kind of spammers who actually pick your title url and description or page content to link back you site and create multiple thousand of pages just for adsense or someting. I had report google a url almost 5 month ago which has 1900 url using my title description and page content and linking me back. those sites were actually MFA sites and nothing. each page had 20 sites of my kind and 3 ads and done. Those sites are still in the engines. no contact or email at all.. how to protect....?