How can I block unwanted 302 redirects to my site from a scraper

[rahul999]

Hello webmasters

I have a blog. A scraper site (example.com) has been copying my articles since 2013. I found the solution for that and started reporting DMCA in GWT every time whenever that site reproduced my content.

I encountered this just now that the site has added a 302 redirect to one of my blog post from it's respective reproduced article page.

I have no clues how to block that redirect from that site. Done a lot of research, but only found references about 302-redirect hijacking and stuff like that.

My concern is that scraper sites are no good in the eye of Google, and a 302 redirect from one of them may harm my blog's performance in the searches. I'm using Apache web server.

Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[edited by: aakk9999 at 1:15 pm (utc) on Feb 22, 2014]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld rahul999!

You say

I encountered this just now that the site has added a 302 redirect to one of my blog post from it's respective reproduced article page.

I am not understanding this completely. Are you saying that when you go to a particular URL from scraper site, it redirects 302 to the URL on your site that has your article?

If so, how do you know that they have reproduced your article on their URL - since you cannot see the content of their URL as the response is 302 ? ...unless you are using a tool that looks at the payload of the 302 response and can see your scraped article there.

With 302 redirect, it often happens that the original URL (which redirects) shows in SERPs with the content of the target URL. If you take a sentence from your article page, which site ranks for it, yours or scraper?

With regards blocking this 302 redirect, I don't think you can since you do not know whether the request to your page has been performed as a result of 302 chain or your page has been requested without the browser requesting the scraper's page first.

Is there any way you can block the scraper scraping your content in the first place?

[lucy24]

With regards blocking this 302 redirect, I don't think you can since you do not know whether the request to your page has been performed as a result of 302 chain or your page has been requested without the browser requesting the scraper's page first.

I think you can do it with a bit of php; there's something looking at redirect_status, only don't quote me. But it won't do any good w/r/t search engines, because they're not following the redirect. They just make note of the new URL and ask for it later.

If the redirect is a 302 rather than a 301, google continues indexing the old URL, right? So the bad site's name comes up in the index while getting credit for the victim site's content.

[aristotle]

I'm confused. Are you saying that the scraper is re-directing all the traffic to your site? Why would he or she do that? i don't understand.

[tangor]

Check server headers... This site offers many examples, if allowed:

This article was written to show innocent parties, who have experienced having their website or keyword rank hijacked with 302 Redirects, meta refresh redirects, no follow meta tags, deceptive redirects, Scraper Directories and other scam artists from using their content, and how to recognize when someone is hijacking your web page and also how to stop it.

[loriswebs.com...]

[rahul999]

@aakk999

Yes that's what I mean. Actually I knew what posts from my blog are copied by that scraper site, as I keep an eye on that to report it to Google. Now the scraper site has started redirecting the copied article to my blog posts using 302 redirects.

The site isn't ranking (won't rank) anywhere as I already reported all of it's stealth to Google.

Let me make it more clear: will these kind of redirects harm my site in anyway in searches? Will it pass the scraper site's penalties over to my site? Should I block such redirects? If yes, then how?

@aristotle

I checked the server headers and found out its a 302 redirect.

@tangor

I don't know why that site is doing so. Maybe to escape or pass the search penalties. That's why I've asked the question.