Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google seem to be giving this new copied site all of my link juice because when I do a link:domain.com search on the URL all of my links show up. Since we have found the copied site our real site has been in freefall.
I have contacted the domain proxy company but they cant seem to help as I dont have the copyright docs on the offending domain name. Although I have tried explaining that all the data is my intellectual property they still refuse to remove the domain.
Is it that easy to damage a site in Google now, can u just put the site in a 100% iframe?
Does anyone else know how I can get this site removed as its crippling our business?
1. Register silly long domain
2. Hide your details using a proxy domain service
3. Put the site you wish to knock out the serps in a 100% iFrame.
4. Sit back and watch the site you've copied drop from the results like a swatted fly.
Maybe it can give you a clue. Also is only your site iframed or other site's content too iframed?
Its just my site that's Iframed, they have even used a unique tittle mentioning my site.
Heres the HTML, Iv cleaned all domains out of it.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>OffendingWebsite.com...at mywebsite.com </title>
<META name="description" content="OffendingWebsite.com Blah blah blah"><META name="keywords" content="blah blah blah, blah blah, blah,">
</head>
<frameset rows="100%,*" border="0">
<frame src="http://www.mysite.com" frameborder="0" />
<frame frameborder="0" noresize />
</frameset>
<!-- pageok -->
<!-- 03 -->
<!-- 7.12-->
</html>
It looks like one of my competitors who is out to hurt me has put my entire site in a 100% iframe.
This implies active links and/or requests to your site (s) for the pages?
Rather than actual copying of your sites page content?
Which is it?
If the aforementioned?
1) Simply implement both refers and anti-frame scripts on your pages, INTSTANTLY.
2) Then go bak through your logs and determine the IP Range/visitor that initiated the action and implement denial access for future transgressions.
I can click on my site within the iFrame the pages change but the URL stays the same as you would expect.
we have tried using ISAPI rewrite which temporally works in blocking the site by throwing up a 403 fordidden header.
After a few mins this stops working and the site returns to normal.
I have also tried document location href javascript to bounce out of the frame but its blocked by the parent window.
I do you think this type of spam could be the reason for our fall in google? I suspect so only because of the link:baddomain.com search which throws up all my links.
Thanks for your help in advance.
But I still can't understand how framing your site can affect your rankings as the content from your site should be requested from your server by the bots directly. (Not like in the case of proxies that request from your server and then throw the page as theirs to the bots.)
I cant quite understand how they are doing it but, if i look at the cached copy of the domain thats copied my site, On yahoo it shows my full content. Also Google seems to have related the links we have, with the scam domain.
i.e when i do the search related:scamdomain.com it shows all of the sites that are actually related to my site.
Additionally check your logs before and after your visit to the phony site and see if your own IP range is the IP in the VIEW THIS FRAME request.
If the latter occurs, there there are a variety of methods to limit this capability.
BTW, if your content is so exclusive?
IMO, allow SE's to cache the pages is not a sound practice.
<frame src="http://www.mysite.com" frameborder="0" />[/url]
This is a direct configuration to frame your page.
The first place to begin is by denying referrals from the other domain (granted this is not full proof, however it will stop the majority)
Step two is in implementing pages requests for your sites contents (regardless of type) to your OWN domain (s). (note; the desired effect here is to white-list those domains that you desire and deny ALL, which could get quite complicated and detailed.)
Once again to restate, I do suggest taking the time to review your logs (regardless of time required)to determine precisely which visitor IP made the initial request and then tested the phony domain framed link.
Anti Frame scripts are only useful if the browser can execute javascripts.
"Live Java" is the majority of the internet users. With IE dominating the browser market and Java active on the majority of those browsers, at the very minimum this amounts to a 75% share.
The first place to begin is by denying referrals from the other domain (granted this is not full proof, however it will stop the majority.
I have tried blocking the URL using ISAPI rewrite but after a few mins the domain seems to get around this.
Im looking though the logs files but as of yet I cant find the offending IP range.
Anybody else have any thoughts if this could knock a site in the serps.
There is also a chance that Google got buggy in this case. Webmaster Tools is the first place I'd check for more information.
Anybody else have any thoughts if this could knock a site in the serps.
Google, nor any other major SE is NOT deceived by framed pages, nor do they (SE's) lack the capability to determine the actual URL.
To verify this, simply use one of the Lynx viewers, and see how the SE's see the phony page html source.
If I do a unique string search on Y it brings my site and the offending copied site up. So it looks like yahoo might think its dup content.
On G my only worry is that when I do a link:copieddomain.com the results are all sites that link to my original site, so it looks like google has given some of the link juice to the offending domain. ....(hope this makes sense.) else why would it show these links when I do the search.
[edited by: c41lum at 3:36 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2009]
I have tried blocking the URL using ISAPI rewrite but after a few mins the domain seems to get around this.
Please forgive my lack of awareness, however I'm without clue as to what a "ISAPI rewrite". at least without combining the WWW.
Are you flushing your browser cache when you express, "after a few mins the domain seems to get around this"?
I've had a few client's sites framed but it never hurt rankings.
I have noticed that when checking links with Yahoo SiteExplorer that if site A frames site B using 'iframe src' then A will show as a link to B.
I've never seen a site hurt by framing on its own.
I think there must have been something else dodgy going on apart from the framing. The fact that your links showed up credited to the other site points towards a variation on the old 302 hijack trick.
yeah im thinking along the lines of a clever 302 Hijack but I just cant work out how they managed to get credited with our links when i do a related:dodgydomian.com search they have also been credited with my related sites as well. And there a PR5 which might just be coincidence
.. Its just bazaar.
Is this a new way of knocking a site out of the serps?
Is this consistent with a 302 Hijack, and if I have been Hijacked would this be the reason iv been falling in the serps?
In those instances, I've found that the URL listed in results is cached with the target site's content, the "This is Google's cache of ..." message lists the hijacking URL, however the base href tag within Google's cache correctly lists the genuine URL.
Put another way, I'm seeing confusion on the part of Google about which URL owns content that is redirected to in various ways.
But you are not redirecting XX.#*$!.X.#*$! (which is the ip address of your server) to www.example.co.uk.
Your rewrite rules is based on a blacklist saying if the host is example.com redirect to www.example.com . But as you can see in case the host is dodgydomain.com or dodgysubdomain.mydomain.com the your server does not 301 redirect.
So instead of a blacklist where you will end up playing whack a mole, have a whitelist. Basically have a rewrite rule that says that if the host is not www.example.co.uk then 301 redirect to www.example.co.uk
The technical details for doing it on ISAPI is not known to me. But I hope you can get the gist of what I am saying.
[edited by: boredguru at 8:37 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2009]
WebGuerrilla ( and I'm not associating Greg with blackhat in saying this ..) used to call it "manipulating search engines" ..he meant "generally" IMO
..which is what we do ..
Google seem to be giving this new copied site all of my link juice because when I do a link:domain.com search on the URL all of my links show up.
Incidentally, this observation in itself does not show that your links are being incorrectly attributed. In fact, you will see the same behaviour when Google has correctly attributed links to URL A (which redirects/frames/tries to steal) to count towards URL B.
A simplified example. webmasterworld.com permanently redirects to www.webmasterworld.com.
If you query Google directly for information on a non-www URL which permanently redirects to the www URL, Google will return results for the www URL. A couple of examples:
[id:webmasterworld.com/google/] [google.com]
[link:webmasterworld.com/google/] [google.com]
Is this a new way of knocking a site out of the serps
Also you can check archive.org for back copies of websites.
The kind of guys who are jacking sites aren't that bothered about losing a 99 cents domain. Google need to close the loop hole if thats what it is.
