Ok so you work real hard on your site and have a good anchor and description. It's so good your competition is jealous. So they execute a plan. They will steal your traffic using your anchor and description. This company seems to be doing just that. http://www.weblinkinternational.com/new/index.asp They have a website with a cgi driven app the seems to steal links. I have not figured out how it works, but I am dealing with it in action. Doing a search in google you will find a sites exact anchor and link. However if you click on it, you will be sent here... http://www.wliinc2.com/cgi/foxweb.dll/wlx/dir/wlxturl?ec=unique-key-here&ID=unique-key-here I have not revealed the keys to protect my client. That then is the cgi app that redirects you where "THEY" want you to go. Several issues concern me here, the first and most important is that they are listed using the copyrighted description of my customers site. This is certainly a google TOS violation. Secondly the redirect site claimes to be under construction and coming soon, however it's dated 1/1/2002, an obviously long time to be under construction. This site is alive and well hijacking links. http://www.wliinc2.com/ Phone calls are met with, that don't exist. Have you ever dealt with this? Have you seen this? Do you have any advice? I have a plan, but I want to get some input before I take action if perhaps someone else has experience that could help us out. I think this is an issue for all of us, not just the site I'm trying to bale out. Thanks and regards.
Well this is a 200 redirect, not a 301. Either way, it's ripped off copyrighted material that links to them and not us who are the actual owners of the material. Very disturbing ethics.
googling to investigate led me to this... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=6318 We're not the first apparently? But, it seems people pay for this "Award winning interactive membership directory" service from them and some of the links are legit, however they are 200 redirects from some other URL, not your own. Don't know if this was paying customer or a hijacked site in the above post.
OK, so I think this is a done deal. They wouldn't help my client, but my three page DCMA complaint seemed to leverage them into submission. They did not want it filed. The link has been killed.