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Google AdSense Meta Refresh Hijacked
aaronwall writes "With the latest Google Update Bourbon it appears that Google has had their AdSense site hijacked in the search results by a meta refresh. In March GoogleGuy commented that this sort of activity usually happens to low quality websites."
2. I for one welcome our new AdSense overlords
3. in soviet russia low quality websites hack YOU!
4. I host a low quality website You insensitive clod!(tm)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine. My sig is my best friend. It is my life.
I knew I should have gone with Microsoft...
for those too lazy to RTFA, it appears google adsense wasn't exactly 'hijacked', but was victim of its own slightly buggy (at the moment) trust algorithms. from the comments there, it's apparantly only a real hijack if visitors get something other than a 301 as well in an attempt to divert their visit. here's what the 'hijacker' himself had to say on jensense.
"I want to thank JenSense and others for posting this thread. I just got off the phone with two different tech writers explaining why I would have a meta redirect on my site. It isn't an attempt to profit from either Google's page rank or some cloaked affiliate link. I am no hijacker. In fact, I'm not sure how I could in any way benefit from this link. The simple fact is this: I write and syndicate articles all over the web. I used to put into those articles direct links to sites I was talking about. A couple years ago I had a problem when I had written and syndicated several articles about GoTo.com when they changed their name to Overture. There were dozens of websites to notify and ask them to update the links in my articles. So I decided to begin using meta refresh redirects rather than listing the URL's directly. I can then keep the links current in all the articles I write. Hopefully Google will look at this and decide to make some changes so this won't occur. It's hard to believe I got a number 1 listing without trying."
Pretty much nobody who doesn't either run a major website or read Slashdot every single day without ever missing will have ANY IDEA WHATSOEVER what this slashdot blurb even means
Does that mean that Google is a low-quality website, or did someone fall asleep at the wheel and leave some holes in the new implementation? Oh well, I never see ads now, thanks to my Firefox...
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Anybody care to translate this to english?
There is an Online Petition if any webmasters are affected by this issue. More attention needs to be brought to it - of course getting slashdotted is a fair bit of attention in itself! They have been denying there was an issue for some time!!
Its already fixed.
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
Its not even true anymore if you search for "Adsense" or "google adsense" in google, you'll get the Google Adsense page.
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
This problem has been around awhile, and is part of the larger problem of search engines filtering out duplicate content. Great for the users, but it can be a real problem for site owners suffering from plagiarism or content theft. There's some information at the Copyscape plagiarism search service about what you can do about it.
AKA spammaster world or search "optimization" world. Choose one.
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Google just string replaces any occurances of "www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/" with "google.com/adsense" in the future. No need to rewrite the algorithm.
For that matter, if I were writing a search site, I would probably code it so my site came up first on every query. Even when it wasn't relevant. For example, a query on "Spicy taco recipes" would still lead to #1 being Nytewynd's page (404: no tacos found)
/. ++
Something tells me this guy didn't expect to be caught - since the site's registered with his own information LOL..
I expect he's already had calls from Google.
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Yes its an issue, and yes Google has already dealt with the offending entry. Nothing more to see hear.
"Usually" is a very important word.
One of the biggest rules of statistics: There's always an exception.
NB: YMMV. IANAL. Take the above with a grain of salt.
plenty of variables here. lets get a little more depth.
"Anybody care to translate this to english?"
OOPS!
When I google too much bourbon, my senses get hijacked, too!
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
In Googleguy's comment, he says that "spammy" sites with low pagerank are more likely to get "hijacked".
Recently, Google's AdSense pages made headlines for cloaking - something they rectified by temporarily imposing sanctions upon the AdSense pages.
It seems to me that the resulting low pagerank for the AdSense pages would quite easily account for the fact that they got "hijacked".
So basically, Google did something many people (a.k.a. whiny morons) thought was "spammy", they subjected themselves to the same sort of punishment they dole out to "spammy" pages to shut up the whiners, and, as a result, they ended up having the same minor bug that affects "spammy" pages affect their own pages.
Big deal.
"Great for the users, but it can be a real problem for site owners suffering from plagiarism or content theft."
What? So much for IP theft only happening to the big boys. Quick! Let's eliminate IP laws before the situation gets out of hand, and they file for an extension.
BTW Anyone who complains about other people's bugs better keep in mind that Taco's "Between Posts" timer is busted.
A google story in the news thats actually News!
Just because its google doesn't mean its news two to three times a day.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Adolescent sniping is all well and good (this being Slashdot and all) but this should be a big deal to you even if you refuse to take the time to understand the specifics (RTFM).
/.) but now they themselves have been a victim of a '302 hijack'
Here's what's going on. Google has a flaw in their algorithm in the way it deals with 302 redirects. Instead of following the internet standard of following the 302 redirect to the new location and indexing that, Google sometimes applies the information, PageRank, and Google ranking position of the 302 destination page back to the page doing the redirecting.
This means that a third-party (usually a shady webmaster) can steal the ranking position of a competitor's site. The original site is usually removed entirely from the Google index further compounding the damage.
Google has repeated denied that this problem exists (here on
If Google can be hit by it - anybody can be hit by it. This is big enough to seriously f'up the Internet - get it?
Didn't you slashtrolls have your panties in a bunch because someone posted the bitter groklaw chick's personal information on the net?
they did a manual adjustment - this problem has been around for 2 years and Google still hasn't managed to fix it
After looking at the guy's site, its quite obvious he wanted caught - to advertise his business.... Google should bill him for his increase in sales... *sigh*
What would they call him about? He did not actually do anything wrong.
He hasn't got any form of contract with google and he hasn't broke any laws...
Two weeks ago if you searched for "google" on www.google.com, the first result that you got was https://desktop.google.com which redirects to the google home page. Google desktop seemed to have hijacked the google search homepage!
Of course, the slashdot editors rejected the story.
Google needs to adjust their canonicalization algorithm so that a page the redirects is not chosen as the canonical url.
If the 302 page is just a redirect, why do they apply the redirectee's pagerank to the 302er's page, and not the other way around (apply the 302er's pagerank to the ridirected page)?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Look, you type "google adsense" and you click the first link (or I'm Feeling Lucky), and the result (as far as the end user is concerned) is Google's Adsense page. That's not a hijacking. That's an escort service (albeit the far less fun kind).
And what's the new use of the word "bourbon"? I prefer mine in liquid form.
Yes, you too can shoot yourself in the foot.
According to a post under TFA by the owner of the site, he didn't do this on purpose.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
I believe Bourbon is the name of this Google update. The slimy search engine optimizers (whose posts you can read if you click the link to webmaster world) name the updates of Google's index in order to keep track of them easier. If you read a little of the thread, I believe they refer to code words for past updates as well.
Seeking a bit of clarification: where are meta refreshes involved in this? Or should the article title read "Google AdSense 302 Redirect Hijacked"?
There are millions of pages that have been 302'd.
It impacts more than just a page when it causes Google to trip various filters.
Check the pagerank of this site and take a wild guess whom they hijacked...
page to have an impact. The page that the 302 is directed at becomes marked as duplicate content and falls over, enough pages fall and Google marks the site as spam so the site falls. Get the picture.
Absent the "highjacking" part it causes a problem for the page that is a 302 target.
This has been laid out many times to google over a period of years.
i wouldnt call the web master world guys slimy. theres definately some slimy guys out there, but wmw seems like one of the better groups
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
From reading the responses here and from the last time this topic surfaced on slashdot, it seems as though people don't fully comprehend the crappiness of the problem.
I run a game programming website as a hobby, so my livelihood doesn't depend on google's ranks. But my page rank has descreased and I have fewer back links as reported by google. The links to my site and it's content have not decreased, but google's reporting says it has.
This is simply the effect where the cause is some casino website that does this damn 301 redirect to my website. I had a leeching problem for a while, so I analyed my web server logs to find out the culprit, in doing so I found some odd web log spam for some website in china and a casino website doing a redirect and theft of my site's content.
I don't make any money off my website, it's a very small niche, but the content is good and it had a nice page rank for a while, so it was an easy target. And there really isn't much I can do. My site got hijacked, google indexed the hijacking page as though it was mine, then they change their page after being indexed in google so that now display advertisements instead of doing the redirect.
As a hobbyist, I can't get into litigation with a damn casino website in a different country. I know a lot of complaints are from the so-called "search engine optimizing" companies, but as an honest webmaster with no comercial interest in google, it's still a pain in the butt. There is absolutely nothing honest webmasters can do to prevent this or to rectify it. The ball is in Google's court to give credit where credit is due, and that's the final target URL, not the referer.
My mom washed my Google AdSense, and IT BLEW UP!!!
put the what in the where?
Well, I was referring to some of the posters on the board. When I see them post about how they were punished during the last update or how they're "rising for some very competitive keywords", I get the feeling that they aren't the most honest internet folk. I regularly monitor my standings in Google for some words related to me, but I don't feel like I'm being punished when I go down in ranking. Of course, I'm not using slimy tactics to try and raise my PageRank, so they have no reason to punish me. Also, I monitor most of my keywords out of curiosity and not because I'm trying to pump up a page for a certain query (current sig excluded :) ).
fair enough, i guess there are a few rotten apples in every tree.
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Actually, now that I think about it, I believe it isn't the index but the algorithm. They update the index every day, but the algorithm isn't updated as often (and is what causes more variety in results, I imagine).
What ever happened to sending someone an email instead of exploiting the problem to make money? He may not have broken any laws but ... never mind, ethics have no place in modern society, why bother - ironic that I got rated troll for the first time 'ever' since coming to /.
Oh well.
Sarcasm noted, but what's scary is that that is almost exactly what 99% of Flash developers would think!