Chinese Hijacking Theft Your site can be next! That is if it hasn't gotten you alraedy. It got me. A criminal web site in China is getting listings on Google for MY pages content AND all MY linked URL's on the pages are changed to their site AND they add a link to their other site on the bottom of the page - powered by 1bu.net Open this link and look at the source code: forums.digitalpoint.com.1bu.com All from my having a link to your forum. Everything they crawl gets hijacked. Does this suck or what? All links internal and external are hijacked. We gotta stop this scam! I tried the anti-hotlink .htaccess file from http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/251.htm but it doesn't stop this new kind of SITE theft hijacking which I haven't seen before quite like this. How can they use my HTML pages like that intact except for changing URL's? Shouldn't an anti hotlink rewrite rule stop the images from showing on their URL? It doesn't... Any suggestions on how to help? There must be a dupe content penalty that is gonna hurt us bad. They already rank on the first page of G where I should be. Here are a few details. Go to Google and search for: site:1bu.com or add a keyword to see specific hijacked sites site:1bu.com alexa site:1bu.com webmaster Right now Google has indexed 175,000 of their HIJACKING pages so far. How is it they get away with this and Google hasn't banned them. They're too busy banning the wrong people just for linking. Look at the source code for one of their hijacked pages. Identical except it has .1bu appended to all URLS example of hijacked alexa page: pages.alexacom.1bu.com/help/privacy.html Can someone can help us bust these criminals or at least find a way to stop the un-authorized use of our content. Thanks! Mike
They must be scraping the sites. Hotlink prevention won't do any good because the images, text, and everything else will now be mirrored on a server in deepest Manchuria. In one sense; man that rocks, from an audacity perspective, but on the other, that totally sucks! I wonder if they are pulling cookies from anyone who logs onto a subdomain.site?
Mike do you know the method they are using to hijack the site? Hijackings are really maddening. Shannon
Either Amazon has advanced security in place or these spammers don't want to piss off Bezos because it doesn't work on amazon.com. It redirects to the correct url. Ebay can be cloned with their url extension however. Here is a list of hijacked and indexed pages: [search=google]allinurl:1bu.com[/search]
Holee Cow! 323,000 in that allinurl results page. I think MC may be right about them scraping.... but how do they get each and every URL to be replaced with as a subdoamin on their server... Now that I think about it - I don't think they are scraping... unless they are storing the pics and scripts on their server... if they are doing that then my .htaccess should be blockling their showing the images. What is a 302 redirect exactly?
This has been discussed over at seochat, some time ago. I think the general consensus was that it was not so much attempted hijacking, but a system to get around chinese censors. I don't know for sure, but I don't think this really falls into the 'hijacking' theme. It's not like they are taking your url or position in the search engines. They are stealing and redisplaying content though. But then, so do others (google cache, archive.com, etc).
Hmmm... I just did a test and removed a JPG file from my server to see if it would show on their page... it didn't... that means they are somehow using my server and bandwidth to show on their URL/sub-domain... Why do you think that the image hotlink code doesn't work on their URL when it works on other URL's I tested it on??? I'm miffed. Not only are they getting my rankings they are using my bandwidth... I'm gonna go for a bike ride now... it'll all be good when I get back, right?
I don't think it's hihacking. All they are doing is redisplaying your content. Any URL displayed to the left of 1bu.com will be displayed on the page, i.e.: www.yoursite.com.1bu.com I don't see how this can affect your actual site. can it??
They are # 8 for a term I used to be in top ten for... my site isn't in the top 100 now? So this is is HIJACKING.
Christopher and DFSWEB... did you guys miss something in what I wrote? How can it NOT be hijacking. Why would you say that? Go to this URL and look at the source code. forums.digitalpoint.com.1bu.com If that isn't hijacking what is it? They are stealing my CONTENT, my RANKINGS and my BANDWIDTH. Do you wanna defend how that is not hijacking please?
Yes it's creating duplicate content and the rule seems to be that the higher PR domain 'wins' the battle which will most likely be them in most cases. It's perhaps not deliberate hijacking but once a link is up and it gets indexed it becomes a duplicate page hence an issue. As I pointed out, it doesn't work for all URLs which is very interesting...
In terms of the site's set-up, I think it's a brilliant little idea. All you need is a list of 1,000 URLs or so each containing 1,000 pages and you have a site with 1,000,000 pages; unique (and lots of ) content etc. Re the rankings issue, it IS a bit of problem. But, the #8 link should still go through to your site (well, your content) wouldn't it?? At the moment, I wouldn't really mind if they hijacked my site and bumped my content up to the top 10! (As my site is nowhere to be seen on Google). No seriously, maybe someone should report them. Unless you have already done it.
I understand the issue, but I don't see the problem! (Am I making sense?) The content is still yours. They are still displaying everything you want "your visitors" to see. They are not stealing your bandwidth, the users who view "your site" (indirectly) will use your bandwidth just like other users. They are simply providing a medium (a very powerful medium) for users to get to your site. I don't really see much difference in being "hijacked" by them and spending thousands advertising on high PR sites. As they both provide exposure and traffic to your site. Only, this one's free!! Having said that, it is on the borderline of being seen as unethical and I personally wouldn't do it. Although it shouldn't take more than 4-5 hours (or less) to set-up a similar site
I think it is DELIBERATE hijacking because they are stealing BANDWIDTH and they are INSERTING their URL at the bottom of pages. For whatever reason they are doing this, they are knowingly stealing content, bandwidth, pagerank, serps, and gaining form having their links on these 323,000 + indexed pages. Why is that not deleiberate? Better question - why has Google not banned them yet?
dfsweb said "I don't really see much difference in being "hijacked" by them and spending thousands advertising on high PR sites. As they both provide exposure and traffic to your site. Only, this one's free!!" The difference is that I see no PageRank gain bcause my web site URL is not on any of the pages they hijack. Not one link do I get credit for. Not even extrenal links. Is that a good thing? My HTML pages get zero exposure. My links get zero popularity. How I am supposed to profit from this if all I do is pay the bill to show the pictures and video with no gain???
dfsweb, you must be joking right? How can you compare this with advertising. If you don't realize what this can cause then please don't make silly comparisons. You as the 'PR expert' and knowing we will get an update in May should know the impact of these things.
PR expert... you were kidding, right? Please disbelievers, go back to my initial post and read it slow please. You missed a lot of the important stuff. dfsweb you said "Re the rankings issue, it IS a bit of problem. But, the #8 link should still go through to your site (well, your content) wouldn't it?? At the moment, I wouldn't really mind if they hijacked my site and bumped my content up to the top 10! (As my site is nowhere to be seen on Google). " Huh? You wouldn't mind??? You guys are sure quick to battle here but you haven't read all the details. Yes, they may be clever but why you are trying to defend them and see good I can't understand. It WILL happen to you. If you want this so badly give me your URL and I will link it on my "infected" sites (notice the plural) so they can HELP your site. But I don't need to because if you are running any coop links you are already getting hijacked by them too. They crawl all links and and everything gets an 1bu.com inserted into the URL and your content becomes theirs. These guys are STEALING rankings. Is that good? If you take a monet and look at the source code EVERY URL is replaced by their URL. Even external links. How could this be good for anyone that is being hijacked by them. It's their pages that are getting rankings - not ours. And we are paying for them to show our images and graphics and videos etc. How is that good? It may be clever and you like that, but what is good about that?
The're inserting their URL at the bottom of each page to get a BL from what seems to be their own page ...... to get a circular linking effect so that they get full PR benefit from each link. I never said that it's not deliberate. But consider this ..... What if you advertised with Yahoo and your ad on Yahoo appeared higher than your site. Would you complain?? I doubt it! Do remember that out of these 323,000 pages there are some that are linking to you too. Plus, you are getting extra traffic to your site. This is the good part. The bad part is the duplicate content, i.e: there are now two copies of each of your pages ...... which could be a problem with Google. So, I would say that if Google hasn't banned them, ask them!
dfsweb I don't think you understand what is happening. The may see my images and words but I can't make 1 single penny from advertising because all the links go to their URL's. Thatt means my commission junction banners all do not work. Can that be good my friend?