Websites Hijacked: Wagons Circle the Googleplex

There is another interesting thread in WebmasterWorld.com that talks about how websites are being hijacked by unscrupulous webmasters and the Google Police are asleep at their desks, with “Do Not Disturb” signs on their doors. According to the thread, websites with Page Rank 5 or below are being targeted by criminal Webmasters, which tank their competition and raise their own sites in the Google rankings violating copyright among other things.

The webpage thieves are doing so by means of a “randomly generated meta refresh page pointing to an unsuspecting site.” These pages employ a 302 redirect inside their server pointing to the unsuspecting Webmaster’s page. As Webmasters who are into search engine optimization know, Google will penalize sites using 302 redirects.

What this means is that if you, your Ma and Pa or Aunt and Uncle build a website in hopes of retiring early and working from home and are unfortunate enough to be targeted for a hijacking, you website will never achieve high rankings in Google, will languish at the bottom of the rankings forever and most likely you will never know why. Only the savviest of Webmaster may be able to discern that a 302 hijacking is actually occurring.

Apparently, Yahoo! and MSN are not susceptible to this hijacking problem as Google is. That is why many Webmasters are up in arms now and wish to storm the Googleplex with picks, axes and laptops in hand. The problem has been going on for 9 months or more and the most vocal of Google’s representatives (unofficial), GoogleGuy has yet to respond.

So, if you have a website that has been optimized for the search engines and is performing well in Yahoo! and MSN and is over 8 months old (outside of the Google Sandbox) but is buried in the Google rankings, your site may just be the target of a website burglar. Right now there is no good solution to this dilemma, so a call-to-action phone call or email campaign to Google may just be in order.

It is recommended, though, that you call or email first before circling the Googleplex as a courtesy warning shot before the actual Cyber-Alamo begins.