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Google Businesses The Internet

Google AdSense Meta Refresh Hijacked 122

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-laugh-on dept.
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."
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Google AdSense Meta Refresh Hijacked More

Google AdSense Meta Refresh Hijacked

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  • bring in the clowns (Score:5, Funny)

    by jack_call ( 742032 ) * on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:21PM (#12647430) Journal
    In March GoogleGuy commented that this sort of activity usually happens to low quality websites
    1. Yes! I've noticed it alot on /.
    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)

  • for those too lazy to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by professorhojo ( 686761 ) * on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:21PM (#12647435)
    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 [jensense.com].

    "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."

    • Re:for those too lazy to RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:54PM (#12647734)
      It is a hijack. What he is refering to is that he isn't a hijacker since he isn't profiting off the link. He using the common 301 redirect hijack that has plague google for a while. If you view the cache [216.239.63.104] of his website, you'll see that googlebot is getting a different page than normal users. Googlebot is getting a 301 to adwords. The inbound(trust) links are credited towards the hijacking site as seen here [google.com]. If you check the first result, you'll notice no link to the hijackers page yet is credited as an inbound link.

      • Re:for those too lazy to RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Buran ( 150348 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @04:35PM (#12648734)
        Just to clarify that a bit -- 301 redirects are not a hijack. They just mean that a resource is 'moved permanently' and search engines will change their databases to point to the new location. I have done this with two paths on my own website here at work and in time Google picked up on the redirections and cleaned its database. It's also useful because this way visitors who got to the site by clicking on old links don't get 404 errors and lose interest -- they just get redirected to the correct page. (It's implemented as ModRewrite instructions in the htaccess file for the site).

        It's only a hijack if you're specifically targeting search bots with customized pages and doing sneaky things that way. Which this guy might or might not be doing ... I couldn't verify anything in that blog post. None of the tests listed to reproduce what is described worked -- no hijacks are apparent anywhere, or even the guy's site, in the search results..
    • 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.

      That's not what I read there. The TrustRank issue was mentioned, but that's about sites that are linked to from Yahoo's RSS feed and thus suddenly from one day to the next are linked to from many sites that use those RSS feeds. Apparently, obtaining a massive number of links within a day's time triggers some spam filter in Google.

      Page hijacking is nor

    • As someone who's written books with actual URLs on the printed page, I can understand his desire to have some way to update stale links without having to track down and change every copy. Automatically redirecting is not a big deal -- this is how TinyURL [tinyurl.com] and other similar (and useful) services work. Most of the printed links in my new book (see below) are done in this way to keep them from breaking when the destination site changes things around and they don't bother to redirect incoming links to the correc

      • Agreed (see comment #12648734 [slashdot.org] for my take on it and what I legitimately use 301 redirects for).

        I haven't seen your books -- do the links on the pages link to your own site where you keep a database of where each link will go that you maintain manually? That's a good idea. Too many books about the Net go out of date fast because the links are out of date by the time the book gets published -- but someone's still got to keep up with it -- that would be you, if you do the database thing. How automated is it?

        • I'm not currently using a database, no, because there aren't enough links to justify that. Some of the links aren't simple redirects, either, as in when an URL in my book points to a page that is actually a collection of links that the reader can navigate to. If I had a lot of links, I'd automate it like you said, though.

          The point is to keep the paper book as current as possible to avoid reader frustration. E-books have the same problem, of course.

          And no, you probably wouldn't have seen my books [ericgiguere.com] unless

  • 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...
    • dude - FireFox can't block text ads that aren't in an iframe.
      • you can right-click and select 'block iframe'...of course, I might be wrong on that point, I'm not exactly in front of my home PC...and it's not like they allow us to use good software here at work...but I'm pretty sure that I've managed to block most iframes, including those with text ads rather than image ads...

        • Re:So, ummm... (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          FireFox can't block text ads that aren't in an iframe.

          you can right-click and select 'block iframe'...of course, I might be wrong on that point

          Read that exchange again and reflect upon just how obviously wrong you are. Reading and comprehension skills aren't overrated.

          • Point. I'd offer up some explanation about how I'm busy today or this, that and the other...but I really don't know how the hell I overlooked that...

            I am shamed, now and forever more.
          • Yes, reading his logic on the surface level, something is wrong with it.

            However, he's not totally wrong.

            Google adwrds ads *can* be hosted in an iframe. A large number of sites do this, probably to avoid the delay in doing it server side themselves, and rather wanting to offload it all on google.

            There's a reason that he mentioned the iframe thing, that's because it actually is an iframe. Just not always.
            • Actually, I went home and tested this theory of mine...Slashdot itself puts their AdSense junk in an iFrame...I was able to block it most easily...I also went to a couple of other sites I knew to use the AdSense stuff, and found that a good many of them also use iFrames - though some do not...

              So there you go.


    • I would bet it's holes in the implementation due to a rushed implementation with shifting requirements.
      I know little of AdSense and nothing of Google's internal processes. However, AdSense sounds like something the marketing nitwits are in charge of. I think we all know about trying to code an application with the requirements being changed on an hourly basis. I have yet to meet a marketing exec that was capable of formulating a plan and following it. If that's the case here, I'd bet this isn't the last we

  • Too Late! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by imscarr ( 246204 )
    Its already fixed.

  • Out of date (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spez ( 566714 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:29PM (#12647522)
    Its not even true anymore if you search for "Adsense" or "google adsense" in google, you'll get the Google Adsense page.

  • Content hijacking (Score:5, Informative)

    by manmanic ( 662850 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:36PM (#12647597)
    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 [copyscape.com] at the Copyscape plagiarism search [copyscape.com] service about what you can do about it.
  • 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)
  • "Usually" is a very important word.

    One of the biggest rules of statistics: There's always an exception.

  • Wha?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Intron ( 870560 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:53PM (#12647719)
    When I google too much bourbon, my senses get hijacked, too!

  • Google cloaking the cause? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26, 2005 @02:53PM (#12647722)

    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.

  • A google story in the news thats actually News!

    Just because its google doesn't mean its news two to three times a day.

  • Hey guys - this is a BIG deal (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gieckboy ( 632841 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @03:04PM (#12647820)
    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).

    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 /.) but now they themselves have been a victim of a '302 hijack'

    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?

    • Re:Hey guys - this is a BIG deal (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Thursday May 26, 2005 @03:13PM (#12647885)
      This is big enough to seriously f'up the Internet - get it?
      Oh come on, you're exaggerating. A failure of 10 root DNS servers is big enough problem to seriously f'up the Internet. The mishandling of 302 redirects allows easy mischief and much confusion, but no catastrophic problems as far as I can tell.
      • Google is how the majority of people on the internet get around. If Google starts showing all spam instead the intended sites that's a big deal right? Sure the internet will recover but Google's basically the main hub for searching right now so it'd definitely hurt.
        • They are how the plurality of people get around, not the majority [searchenginewatch.com]
        • Remember when AltaVista was the way the majority of people on the web got around? AltaVista started sucking and people stopped using it. Now it's all but dead, and has been for some time. There web was around long before Google, and somehow people managed.

          If Google starts showing all spam instead the intended sites, people will start using Yahoo. Or MSN. Or....

          Google's death would hardly doom the web, much less the Internet. At some point people would decide that they don't like the results that Goo
    • 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)?

      • Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)

        by hanssprudel ( 323035 )
        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)?

        They don't. A PageRank is something that Google assigns to a URL rather than a page, based on how many pages containing the keyword links to it and some other stuff. The issue is that Google finds two URLs that lead to the same page, one is the page itself, and one is a 302 redirect.

        Now when you search for a term and this pag
    • This is big enough to seriously f'up the Internet - get it?

      The fact that you used the word 'Internet' instead of 'Web' makes me disinclined to believe you. Google indexing affects web sites. The rest of the Internet is unaffected. Your ability to download from a torrent, place an VoIP call, play internet poker or even post sophemoric comments on Slashdot is completely separate from Google's indexing and any problems they may have.

      Your argument sounds like the kind of blogger argument that disregards t
    • 302 redirects are temporary, 301 is permanent.

      Following a 302 and using the resulting page in the index would be breaking spec.

      If I give you a URL and it 302 redirects somewhere, and tomorrow I change the redirect, remove the old redirected to page (assuming it is all on my site) and put a new one where the new 302 points to - your links will get broken if you threw out the original URL and kept where it (originally) pointed to.

      E.g.

      a ---(302)---> b

      I give out URL a.

      Then, I change where a points

      a --

    • 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 doesn't sound like a bug at all. This sounds more like Google actually bothered to implement the HTTP specification [isi.edu] correctly, and the web site

    • > This is big enough to seriously f'up the Internet - get it?

      Google's a company that can do what it wants. If one company can f'up (sic) the Internet, then it doesn't say very much about the internet, does it?

  • I saw this two weeks ago with "Google" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Thursday May 26, 2005 @03:11PM (#12647867) Homepage Journal

    Two weeks ago if you searched for "google" on www.google.com [google.com], the first result that you got was https://desktop.google.com [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.

    • Two weeks ago if you searched for "google" on www.google.com, the first result that you got was https://desktop.google.com/ [google.com] which redirects to the google home page. Google desktop seemed to have hijacked the google search homepage!

      This is more as a result of Google not giving their own pages an enhanced pagerank then from any sort of accidental hijack. I would guess that people don't link to google.com [google.com] very much at all - it's a very simple, no-info search page after all. So people link to Google's new d [google.com]

      • According to google, the google home page has 3.5 million incoming links [google.com]. That is hardly "people don't link to google.com very much at all".

        That and "www.google.com" is the only page on the internet that gets a perfect 10/10 page rank. That could be by definition, or it could be that it actually has enough incoming links to deserve it.

        • My theory was more along the lines of: "When Google released Desktop Search, the flurry of activity meant that for a while at least, desktop.google.com got more hits then google.com, inflating it's pagerank and putting it above www.google.com in a search for 'Google'."

          "very much at all" was probably a bad choice of words, but "people didn't link to google using the keyword 'Google' as often as they linked to Google Desktop Search with a keyword containing the string 'Google' within whatever arbitrary time

  • 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.

    • Re:Hijacked? No, ESCORTED. (Score:4, Informative)

      by adpowers ( 153922 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @03:55PM (#12648325)
      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.
      • 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
        • 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
      • 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).

  • Slashdot blacklists itself! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @03:38PM (#12648139) Homepage
    Yesterday, the Slashdot home page was, instead of showing Apache headlines, showing a message that the Slashdot RSS feed had been blacklisted. Apparently, Slashdot's RSS feed server blacklisted Slashdot's own home page builder.

    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.

    Posted by: kj at May 25, 2005 12:35 AM

    I want to thank JenSense and others for posting this thread.

    Thanks for the comment Air Charter. 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

  • Seeking a bit of clarification: where are meta refreshes involved in this? Or should the article title read "Google AdSense 302 Redirect Hijacked"?

  • Not only that (Score:4, Interesting)

    by broothal ( 186066 ) <christian@fabel.dk> on Thursday May 26, 2005 @05:04PM (#12649002) Homepage Journal
    Check the pagerank of this site [darkseoteam.com] and take a wild guess whom they hijacked...

  • my thoughts as a 'victim' of this process. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eric Coleman ( 833730 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @06:00PM (#12649438)
    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.

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