Link manager messing with my SERPs!!

Hi all,

I've just come across something very bizarre, and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it. One of my sites sells small green widgets, the website is smallgreenwidgets.com. The phrase "small green widgets" drives the majority of the search traffic due to name recognition and offline marketing methods.

Up until just recently, the site was a solid #1 position for that phrase, but starting about a month ago it would fall in and out very regularly (ex. #1 one day, completely out the next).

Yesterday while investigating this further, I navigated to the site and then viewed Google's cache via the Toolbar. Low and behold, the cached version of the page was from another domain! This is what I saw at the top of the cache for smallgreenwidgets.com:

This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.totallyunrelateddomain.com/cgi-bin/datacgi/database.cgi?file=LinkManager&form=HitOut&&record=6122&HitsOut=%5Binc1%5D as retrieved on Dec 23, 2004 00:00:25 GMT.

What I discovered is that totallyunrelateddomain.com was using a link manager and had linked to our site. Apparently the link manager, which uses some kind of redirection, has confused google and hurt our rankings! Even more, when I search for "smallgreenwidgets", one word, the above URL is #1 and the real site is #3!

Of course this opens up all kinds of possibilities and questions...Why is Google getting confused?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Something similar has happened to me before, but, don't worry. What you could do is ask the person who runs that link directory to remove your link. However, normally, Google will sort this out. It has been going on for over a month now though? When this happened to me, the affliate link actually replaced my serps for some words! So when you click on this first link (other domain), it redirects you to your page?

This sounds more like page hijacking than anything else.

I would investigate it further

Yes, I have already requested that the link be removed. Clicking on the link does redirect to the homepage.

The question that comes to my mind is, can i submit my competitors to that link directory?? (not that I would)

Googleguy is looking for examples of this problem. In his words: "Drop an email to webmaster [at] google.com with the keyword "canonicalpage" (all as one word) and I'll ask someone to collect the feedback and pass it on to an engineer. Being extra clear will help us with any feedback you send, e.g. "The correct site is somedomain.com, but if you do the query bla, you'll see that such-and-such.com shows up instead."

Please do this. This hijacking problem is major, and has been going on for almost a year now. All the evidence possible needs to be sent to make Google fix it.

This happens often with redirects like this (302-redirects), especially if the redirect is from a strong domain, and the link is pointing to a weak domain (fresh, low PR). So IMO this is not hijacking, it's a result of a 302-redirect.

Just do a search for site:yourdomain.com and probably this link will be listed as a page on your domain. This is natural because a 302 is telling Google that the page is temporary moved.

Yep, you're absolutely right about that.

Read this Donna and sent in the details of one of my pages that is being screwed.

Got a reply from a REAL PERSON from Google within 4 hours!!!!!!

Never had a real person reply before....

Wow, I need to sit down...

Now lets hope they do something with the information.

Thanks Donna

heh, can understand why you were stunned to receive a reply from a real person. that rarely happens. thank you for sending the info in. i've been wanting to see this problem erased for a long time, and i dont even have a site with the problem. but it is a bug that i strongly feel needs to be squished.

Yeah, I got a response from a real person too...hopefully the Google'neers will get on this ASAP.

Thanks, Donna, for the tip!

Cool. Please let us know if anything happens.

In other words, Google was unable to fix this hijacking for more than year now, I am not talking about individual sites, but to clean Google algo. That is scary.

Is this an example of what you all are talking about.

For example my site is:

www.mydomain.com

A directory is link to me with the following type of url.

www.somedirectory.com/frame.cgi?url=http://www.mydomain.com&id=3576

When you click on the above link, you are automatically taken to my homepage. This listing also shows up in the serps with my page title.

Is this an example of the page jacking your talking about ?

Obviously, your site was hacked. Read this article:
http://www.loriswebs.com/hijacking_web_pages.html

I have the same problem and i'm still trying to solve it ??: