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I've just noticed an odd little quirk, that google has indexed a redirect rather than the page to which it redirects..
If I search for "blue widgets" I get 9 results as I'd expect, but one of the results - the one to my page, reports the URL as someone else's site. On further exam. the url is a meta-refresh page (pretty standard for link tracking?) that refreshes to my page..
What I don't quite understand is why Google would list this page (which has valid html of it's own) with my content on it?
Is this what cloaking is? Seems potentially a bit nasty?
Any help appreciated.. soz if this is a FAQ :)
You might want to use a browser like Opera that allows you to disable meta refreshes, and take a look at the source of that page. The other site may be including the redirect page - and thus your page - in an iframe.
Just a thought.
Jim
For cloaking dont you have to know the IP address then serve a page according to that IP address so give the googlebot IP address a nice spammy page then give any other IP address the normal clean page... of course I could be completely wrong :)
Craig
You may also try to type
view-source:http://yourdomain.tld in the address bar of your browser.
Dan
I checked the source and headers with my trusty lynx and it seems perfectly legit.. that's what's so odd about it.
The page is a valid "click here if you don't get redirected" and the reason is valid - since it's visitors are people who use an OS that has some very old browsers that don't neccasarily support META's properly..
The headers of the page are standard 200 headers.. I'm perplexed! :(
Jim
It shows my html... broken of course cos none of the img's work..
Any ideas?
