Hello! I am looking for someone who can help me repair a site. Here is the problem: the site works properly, but when someone googles me and clicks on the google link, it redirects them to my competitors...The links used to work properly... Google "rapidshare link generator", click on rapidcheat. It should direct you to rapidcheat.com...Has my php been hijacked, or damaged? Any suggestions? Thanks!
Don't you have any backup that you could upload and replace all the old files with? Should take care of the problem. If not, download your site and check the main files for any code that look suspicious.
I think there is only one file you need to check... .htaccess (its a hidden file in your site's root folder)
Exactly. .htaccess is the files where the main domain or any domains under shared hosting will be re-directed to another domain. You should be able to find the .htaccess file in your root directory.
Let us have a look at your live site. If .htacces is empty, then that is not your problem. More likely you're database has suffered a SQL injection attack. Would be much easier to diagnos if we could see this in action rather they guess in the dark.
I would of bet there would of been some redirect in that file... but guess it is happening elsewhere... To see this in action... google for rapidcheat.com His site will come up at top. You click on the link from google and it is displaying 3 other websites (the competition). If you put his URL directly into browser... the problem does not exist... which normally suggests that the site is clean. Strange one indeed.
First place to check (after the .htaccess file) would be your hosting panel to see if anyone has placed redirect on there. Other than that, someone may have hacked your code using a RFI (remote file inclusion) which contains the redirect information...in that case, you would be better downloading the site and going through the .index.php file to check for any obvious changes to the header.
whippet has a good point. I totally borked my test server last week by uploading an htaccess file to my home folder. It had some pretty neat consequences lol. They could have placed it there rather than in public_html. I ran a header check on his site earlier and it came up fine but was definitely not going where it was supposed to. Nigel
Indeed... a bit odd. Be sure to check your files such as index or any other pages. Do you have any subpages that you can show us which are working fine? If there is a problem with your database, then I suggest your re-construct/repair your tables. Or if it's your files, then you might as well bring your original files up again and replace them with current and make any necessary changes as needed.
Ok, this is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. You're right, if you hit the site directly, no problem (which suggests that the redirecting is not happening at your site or server level); however, when clicking through from Google, it does redirect. . . and redirects to various sites such as rsgenerator.net, fsfox.com & rapicl.com. I examined the link to your site in Google, and don't see anything there. If I right click on the link and open in new tab, it opens your site without the redirect. It appears that the redirect is actually happening through Google somehow. Maybe you should bring this up on the Google forum.
Thank all for their input. As Sean@wms suggested, I will post this on Google forum and see what they have to say. OC
Sounds like a redirect script has been placed on your site. I might try searching your site code(from server side, either download site or ssh) for 'google' and see what comes up. Slim chance that this will work, but turn off java on your browser and still see if the redirect happens. It may be a clue as to a javascript redirect.
If you had read the thread here, you would know this is conclusivley not the case. There is NO ISSUE on the site itself; there is only an issue when clicking through from Google. I wish people would read before posting!
Well, I can't wrap my mind around Google getting hacked, but the symptom only occurs when clicking through from Google. Also, keep a very close eye on the status bar when clicking through, I never see it hitting the real site, just straight to this redirect network. Really weird, and I'm totally stumped on how that could be. However, when hitting the site directly (even from a right click; open in new tab from Google), there is no issue. What's more, if it were an injection attack (which was my first guess on this before I looked more into it), I'd have a hard time seeing how that could inject conditional logic like this; that is, it would have to inject some sort of conditional logic like this: If referring site = Google.com, then Randomly select a site to redirect to End If Not only can I not see how that could be injected, I find it hard to believe that if one when to that length, why only restrict it to Google referrals?
Hello all and thanks for the input so far! A new twist to all of this: I just searched both yahoo and lycos, and had the SAME results! The links redirect to my competitors! I guess that means the problem has to be in my script? What's with this? OC
Dang! So it really must be on your site somehow/where. Possibilities might be .htaccess, your home page, or possibly some content the database is pulling in on the home page. The thing I really don't get is that I never see your URL in the status bar after clicking through, though I see the competitor URLs durring the redirect.
STOP THE GAME! I just went through all the files on the server for rapidcheat, and found this file: "Fail.txt The script no longer works. For now on it will redirect itself. Please contact the author. * This file was auto-generated. ** Script redirection will stop if you remove this file." I tried to delete the file, it came right back. Obviously this is a script problem- will contact the author and try to get it resolved... What really stinks is that I am #1 for that search, and till this happened was at 30K alexa! Thanks!