Forum Moderators: open
The link format is:
[theirsite.com...]
And if you click on the link (whether in Google or on the linking www.theirsite.com site), you get my page with the page's correct URL.
I'm happy to have the additional traffic, but I'm curious to know if the redirect could cause problems for me in Google (e.g., by appearing to be a mirror page to Google, which is displaying it with the other site's URL and--presumably--with my own URL elsewhere in the search listings).
Not only that, but the link anchor text and annotation are legitimate. (The site owner identifies the link as pointing to my article on my site.)
I wonder what the point of such linking might be. Maybe the Website owner naively thinks it's necessary to keep PageRank from "leaking" to other sites from the home page?
There is currently a site that is an EXACT copy of mine. They only changed the copyright data. All the rest is the same - the pages lead to my pages - the links are all internal on MY site and the ads are mine.
There is no way for this person to make money off this site - it all goes to me.
He doesn't have hidden links or anything like that.
I just don't get it.
I have run into webmasters who forget to change all the links to their site (or overlook one) - but this was new to me.
I know it is off topic, but you can never tell what is in the persons mind.
If it isn't a spammy site - I wouldn't worry about it. I know google doesn't like MISLEADING redirects, but I have seen plenty of sites with redirects do fine in google.
I don't think they make many mistakes in this area, but I could be wrong. My PERSONAL OPINION is this is something that would usually be done in a manual spam check - rather than automatically.
Her site seems to be fine, but she does seem interested in search engines judging by her huge list of keywords.
However, she could be doing it as sort of a tracking system. She can probably see how many hits each page in the rd/ directory gets - and this lets her know how many people are clicking on that link.
If I had to guess - that is why she is doing it - her other SEO techniques don't really seem of the sort that would lend itself to the saving PR personality type. Not that I am a SEO profiler or anything :)
However, she could be doing it as sort of a tracking system. She can probably see how many hits each page in the rd/ directory gets - and this lets her know how many people are clicking on that link.
Aha! I think you've nailed the reason. It does make sense.
