iframing site and negative seo

[patc]

Hi,

Back in December 2010 the front page of my site was ripped off and hosted on another domain. I noticed it because they kept my tracking code in the HTML so I could see the domain it was coming from - plus thousands of visitors came in a very short space of time.

Less than a month later, my site was penalised. This was something that took me nearly 5 months and 6 reconsideration requests to rectify. At the time I swore the two things were linked.

Now today I have got about 5 visitors per second arriving from a domain (with words in the same niche) which is iframing my home page. There is nothing but the iframe, and a hell of a lot of traffic (presumably bought traffic). Do I have a lot to fear here, SEO wise? I wish I could preemtively tell Google "IT'S NOT ME!"

I have sent a cease and desist to the hosts as a bare minimum but I don't know how long they will take to remove the content, if at all.

Given past history, this really unnerves me, for the fact that in both instances there appeared to be no direct benefit to the perpetrators, so something shady is obviously going on.

Anyone on the 'dark side' know if this is a known method of harming a site?

[seoskunk]

Why not just break the iframe by using javascript. I have never heard of an iframe being used as a page hijack but could be wrong

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (top.location!= self.location) {
top.location = self.location.href
}
//-->
</script>

[Robert Charlton]

I wish I could preemtively tell Google "IT'S NOT ME!"

DMCA.

Get it on the record, asap, and do a screen capture showing the page and the url that's not yours.

[patc]

Thanks seoskunk. I did think about escaping the frame, but in a way, could look even worse for anything tracking the traffic that's bouncing off the keyword heavy domain they're iframing me from. Plus it could be bait to do exactly that? I don't know.

Robert - DMCA to Google themselves? Definitely a good idea.

[seoskunk]

You could just redirect the traffic to a back to there server on their 404 using some php i.e. something like

<?php

$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];

if ($referer == 'www.example.com')
{
header('Location: 'http://www.example.com/404');
}

else
{

}

?>

Let their bandwidth burn

[patc]

seoskunk - I had pondered that too, and to be honest again I feel bad even associating my domain with a malicious retaliation, regardless of any toolbar tracking going on out there.

[tedster]

With an iframe, your domain's URL should still be getting an impression. And historically, the src attribute of an iframe has not been considered a backlink.

Matt Cutts said a few months back that Google was considering the situation, but I haven't seen or heard of any change - probably because of this and other malicious potential. In fact, I can't see how they could ever count ALL iframe src attributes as backlnks - but they might figure out a selective way to do it spometime.

[patc]

tedster - the URL's getting an impression alright... it's full screen, full page, just with their URL at the top! It's on the root of the domain, framing the root of my domain. Their domain's first two keywords are two keywords my domain ranks highly for. It doesn't seem accidental in any way.

I hope it's not considered an endorsement or a 'signal' of a paid link, or anything like that. The traffic is pure zombie - hit the page and don't browse anywhere else, almost as if their domain page gets hidden or popped behind, etc. Anything tracking bounce rates is worrying from there.

[tedster]

The traffic is pure zombie - hit the page and don't browse anywhere else

If the time spent on the page is high enough (I'd say 15 seconds or more) then the technical bounce rate is not a problem, IMO. If you can, try to segment your bounces so this traffic can be counted separately from the rest to page's traffic.

However, a frame breaker also sounds like a good thing to try IMO. Reclaim the bandwidth and straighten out your stats a bit.