302 hoax?

OK, I would just like to update you about: Google 302 & meta refresh Hijackings.

I have successfully opened a channel of communication with a leading software engineer at Google. Please submit your examples of 302 redirect Hijackings to me and I will forward them.

Send examples to:

Let's get it together people - submitting your examples will help Google fix this problem for once and for all

 

Wow! Well done, Darrin!

 

Well, if it was unclear, let me try it simpler:

Outbound links decrease the net cumulative PR of a site.

Qualification: they do so if--as is almost universally the case--a page with links to pages not in that site also has one or more links to pages within the site.

I don't know why that simple proposition remains confusing. Let us say I have a mere two-page site. Page A links to Page B, and Page B links back to Page A. Moreover, other sites link to each of those pages. The backlinks give A and B some PR; A's link to B gives B a little PR beyond what B's backlinks alone give it; B's link to A, in turn, gives A a little PR beyond what A's other backlinks give it. So far, so easy, I would think.

Now we add an outbound link on B to some page outside the site, and do the same on A. Now B's link to A only passes half as much value to A as it did before, and likewise A's link to B. Thus, both A and B end up with less PR than they had before the external links were created.

(Their PR is actually lowered a trifle worse than in half owing to the iterative effect: A's link to B is worth less, so B's PR is less, so B's link to A is worth less, so A's PR is less yet, and so on and so forth forever, except that the change diminishes significantly with each iteration. The SEs use, I suppose, quite a few iterations in calculating the net PR for all pages on the web.)

So, to be persnickety, the iteration effect means that it is not exactly true even to say thatThe page providing the outgoing links loses nothing, though I grant that that is nit-picking. But the average webmaster doesn't care exactly where on her site PR is lost--what matters is that placing external links does lower the cumulative PR of all site pages combined.

Whether the hard numbers are of a size to make the effect worth worrying about--not to speak of the ethical and other aspects of out-linking--is another discussion.

(Sidebar: some webmasters actually "hide" links within their own sites. They do so when it is important to them to emphasize the PR of the site index page, even at the expense of other pages. If one places a link on the index page to each other page of the site, and one link on each other page back to the index page, one maximizes the front page's PR. If site structure dictates links from one page to another other than to and from the index page, "hiding" those links maintains the primacy of the index page.)

 

PR leaks

Totally agree with you Owlcroft.

It of course does not stop me linking out.

It also appplies to any link you have on your site - even to internal links that are irrelevant to seo. Its why on my SEO vBulletin hack, and now on the new vBulletin version 3.5 (thanks to me) there are rel=nofollows onto links that don't need PR or as much PR as they are getting. I want the most PR getting to the links that I want top of Google.

302's

Thanks Darrin for yor email address - I have sent you a 302 issue that has bugged me for ages.

 

iMacFlats

Since you use php you need to place a no follow on your page.

Two ways to prevent the problem in a site that uses a hit counter.

One place a no follow in the robots meta tag:
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow">

or if you use perl and the script is cgi then have an exclude for your cgi-bin in the robots.txt file.

Do not alter anything in .htaccess!!

Vin

 

Darrin Ward

I suspect the problem is due to dynamic pages where the .htaccess file has been altered.
It has become popular to alter the .htaccess to display what looks like an htm or html page when in fact it's a dynamic php generated display.

Others will force a redirect to the root of the directory such as mysite/sub/

This is done by many to avoid problems with a SE indexing the page.

Might be wrong but two cases that were shown to me both had that in common.

 

Darrin

I believe the impossible has happened. A miracle - my clients index page has just been cached - all be it with a march date, but it is a start. Did you forward on the email I sent you???

The page is not ranked on Google yet for the main search term or for the company name, but I am very pleased that it is at least cached. Only waited 8 months!!! Or should I say, only waited several short days after having first contacted you.

If its your help, and it seems most likely - thanks heaps!

And the other thing - when searching for unique text on the clients home page, only his page comes up. And it actually does come up!!!

It still has lots of repairing to do, but I am hopeful that this is the start.

Thanks again.

 

I found four that had me listed today. My rankings have tanked, so has my traffic.

It's like August 2003 all over again... whatever they did in February, they seem to have reversed... I thought I might have a fighting chance...

And then there's this guy...

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=19274

Excuse me while I go puke for the third time today.

 

Hi NetMidWest,

I understand, you are reffering to one of my site through above link. As mentioned, I don't have any clue regarding relationship between 302 and webhostrank site. I am using a predesigned script downloaded from dbmasters. This is something similar to one common script offered by prozilla

I have seen number of sites using this script at large:
directory.etalkinghead.com/
http://www.anfieldstats.co.uk/links/index.php

If you go and do a google search you would find hundred of sites using this script.

If all of them are doing 302 redirect, they are doing out of ignorance as they are simply using that script.

I think that your comment "to puke" is unwarranted and could have been avoided by display of some bit of maturity on your part? Provided, you want to help ignorant people or proove your point.

BTW: I am still trying to understand what this 302 and really how my site is doing or related with that. Any help from any quarter would be highly appreciated.

 

Uh, webhost? I think you're taking this way too personally... and misinterpreting the previous post to boot.

I think NetMidWest was commenting on the fact that his sites seem to be going down the tubes while the post he referenced by you was talking about a spike in AdSense clicking, implying the opposite...

Repeat to yourself 20 times:
Not everything is an insult...
Not everything is an insult...
Not everything is an insult...
...

 

Done and thanks for your note... really appreciate.

However, I need help now, I want to know following:

Does webhostrank site uses 302, if yes how to find that
What is the way to avoid that, How can I correct that
I don't want to be caught on something that I am ignorant too, so I need help from experts over here.

Also, there are plenty of scripts like linkers, prozilla, does all of them are involved into this?

Thanks

 

http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi
http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp
http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php

Some sites have gone as far as to redirect the request from some of these services. If one is checking out a possible 302 problem site, I do suggest using several, and perhaps some of the lesser known ones.

Webhost, I mean you no enmity. I am glad you are succeeding. However, the scripts that are used for sites such as yours are causing major problems with the rankings of others. The hosting industry has been hard hit, and I will not spend a penny on AdWords until Google fixes the problem. When you should rank organically for a phrase, and you don't because of one of these scripts, it pushes up the pricing of the phrase and waters down the results on the search engine. That is money that could be spent on phrases that are tougher to rank for.

Having been in several such directories, and watching my site tank for over a year due to them while Google sat back and raked in advertising dollars, sharing it with those who are using the scripts nefariously for their own gain, and ranking the redirect site higher because of the bug, all the while ignoring this huge problem, it makes me sick to see that a problem I thought had been all but fixed come back and ruin my robot and visitor traffic again.

I realize that there are many who have used these scripts innocently, and you seem to be one of them. But I do have a problem with Google and their adsense program allowing such sites as this:
[nourl]http://www.jumpwebhosting.com/[/nourl]
Allow the popup when you visit. Do you see the host advertising on the popup? Do a whois lookup for jumpwebhosting.com. I think it is obvious what the owner is doing here, and in Google's shoes, I would at the very least ban adsense from such sites as it waters down the advertising effectiveness of the adsense program. When a site such as this gets ranked over one of the sites that it lists, the user is not finding the organic results they were looking for. Quite often, the site owner is perfectly aware of what they are doing.

I however do have a problem with Google allowing such scripts to be ranked at all, and with any sites created by scripts that are solely made up of links for the purpose of creating traffic for adsense or other uses. DMOZ results sites used on a site that has other content is not a bad thing; I have many good links from them. DMOZ result sites that use only DMOZ results for adsense or popup traffic are a problem, in my opinion. They are the smog of the internet. Many of the 302 redirect problem sites are using top results scraped from one engine or another, so ranking well on MSN or Yahoo makes a site vulnerable.

Thank you for the info on the particular script you are using, and others you have obviously looked at. Perhaps there is some pressure to be applied there, as well, similar to the rel=nofollow campaign for blog comments. Or perhaps Google will find a way of filtering out the sites that use those particular scripts that cause the problem, since they seem unable to solve the problem and refuse to quit following 302 redirects that go beyond the domain they are found upon, or treat them as temporary (as intended) and not the permanent site that deserves to be ranked.

Perhaps a rel=nofollow will work on one of these sites; I am not about to set one up to find out, however.

I was literally sick to my stomach that day over several sites I had found, and were ranking near where I had only a few days before. I have been ranking well since the Feb. update, and felt I was in the clear as far as these problems are concerned, for whatever reason. To see it happen again, and knowing what happened before, combined with the complete futility of the situation, caused a stress reaction that usually only comes with futility. Normally, I thrive on stress, do my best work under such circumstances. But when there is stress and nothing can be done or the efforts are fruitless, the reaction is a sickening feeling. As I found more that were not listing me, and your post, it became obvious that the problem will not be solved anytime soon, and in fact seems to have gone back to pre-Feb. status.

I suggest you use the adsense money to find another script, or perhaps to launch a content website, perhaps one with webmaster or hosting related articles? If you have a unique collection of such articles, you should be able to utilize it for adsense traffic and perhaps hosting referrals as well.

But first, kick back and have that beer, and don't read too much into this. Your site may not be a long-term money maker, but for now, I suspect you will see a few more nice checks.

Lawrence