Ok, see the search for my home city, Buenos Aires, on Google.com: Buenos Aires Maybe it will be a little different for you all in different parts of the world, but I see buenosaires.com at number 2 and english.buenosaires.com at number 5. However, click on both results and you get exactly the same page - they both end up at english.buenosaires.com. Basically I wanted to know how are they doing this? Some kind of dodgy redirect? And is it against any of Google's policies? I can't even get a cache of the number 2 result buenosaires.com - it just goes straight to english.buenosaires.com - not even the cache of that one at all!?! One for Matt Cutts?
They are redirecting people based on their language preferences - other sites that have done this have gotten into trouble with Google... This is the code they're using for the redirect: <SCRIPT> if (navigator.appName=='Netscape') var language=navigator.language; else var language=navigator.browserLanguage; if (language.indexOf('es')>-1) document.location.href='/marco_sp.htm'; else if (language.indexOf('en')>-1) document.location.href='http://english.buenosaires.com/'; else document.location.href='http://english.buenosaires.com/'; </SCRIPT> Code (markup): Looks like that if your language settings are set to Spanish you'll be redirected to /marco_sp.htm - otherwise, if it's English you get the "english" subdomain. It does look shady - people never see the www.buenosaires.com - and on that page that does the redirect are a bunch of links and keywords. - Hannes Johnson
Thanks Hannes...so, being a good ethical webmaster myself, I should report these guys to Google? Will they pay any attention? And how can I go about viewing the full source code of buenosaires.com so that I can see those keywords? I thought Google were supposed to be cleaning up that kind of keyword hiding anyway?
They will get in trouble by google for this eventually, i have seen a company take up the whole 6-20 positions by using .english .french etc very annoying but they will be going down just a question of when.
Hi Rapesco...that case you mention sounds very bad! Thing is, this Buenos Aires website has been there like this for at least a year. I only realised something might be wrong when I recently started to learn about SEO. And given that one of my websites is trying for this keyword phrase, what is the best way to alert Google to this? Do they actually listen to the report spam form? Or is there a way to get Matt Cutts to listen?
You can always try filling out the spam form might take them a while to reply as I'm sure they get a lot of responses. You could also try a post in Matt Cutts blog, he does read and respond to his blog but he might not look at individual cases, you can only try.
well, I reported them to Google through the spam form, but i have a feeling these things never get acted on. had a quick look at matt cutts' blog too, and he says not to post spam reports in his comments, but to use the form. lots of people replied to say that when they use the form their report is just ignored! ah well. any other suggestions for how to tackle this? and hannes, or someone technical, how can i view the full source code of buenosaires.com - i can't get to it to do so because of the auto redirect. thanks all.
help bump! please can anyone technical let me know how i could view the FULL source code of the buenosaires.com page before it redirects....the suspense is killing me thanks...
I'm not sure what the point of getting them reported would be? Eventually they will get found out, or they won't. Are you trying to push them out of the way to leapfrog them?
I doubt you will get all that much done. As far as I know subdomains are treated as a separate site therefore the SE sees it as 2 different sites and there is nothing wrong with that. Thats just me 2 cents, you never know, you may get someone from Google to take a look at it, but other then that they arent doing anything illegal in my opinion.
Sorry Buenos, but there is nothing untoward happening there. There is no duplicate content, the redirects are happening according to a browsers language settings, and if a user has Javascript disabled, they will see the www version without a problem. All told, as much as you might like to see them go, I'm afraid its unlikely. MAYBE they'll treat the content on the home page as keyword stuffing, but not very likely. Hope it works out for you tho
But hang on a minute....these guys have two webpages in the top 10 that take the majority of users on google.com (ENGLISH) to EXACTLY the same english page of the website. there has to be something wrong with that. if it was on google.com.ar and you has buenosaires.com taking you to the spanish versions (because youa re in argentina) and then english.buenosaires.com in english both in the top 10, that would be fine. but two results taking you to the same english page on the english google.com is surely not what the search results should be about? also, the majority of users do not get to see the keywords on buenosaires.com, but the search engines do. i thought that users and search engines seeing different things like that is supposed to be against the rules? finally, how to i go about turning javascript off so that i can see what is on buenosaires.com. I really want to see the source code...but no one has suggested how yet. i'd really appreciate some help thanks.
of course. that is what SEO is all about - getting as high in the results as possible. IF someone is breaking the rules of google, then i would be mad not to try and get google to do something about it (although i doubt they actually will listen to me)
yes, the domain and subdomain are treated as different sites. BUT the domain should not be showing at all, as all the large majority of users get to see is either the english subdomain or the spanish page....no one gets to see the domain page itself, and so that result should not be showing (in a perfect world)