Pages mirrored on unknown websites (not just content, all the HTML)... blackhat I've never seen before.
-
Someone more expert than me could help... I am not a pro, just doing research on a website... Google Search Console shows many backlinks in pages under unknown domains... this pages are mirroring the pages of the linked website... clicking on a link on the mirror page leads to a spam page with link spam... The homepage of these unknown domain appear just fine... looks like that the domain is partially hijacked... WTF?!
Have you ever seen something likes this?
Can it be an outcome of a previous blackhat activity?
-
The links actually are just in some forms
-
Thanks everyone, I'll do more research and update all
-
One more thing that could be a long shot but is worth keeping an eye on: If someone had zero ethics and wanted to steal your links, one thing they could do is reach out to webmasters that link to you and pretend to be you, and claim that the mirror site is the new version of the website and ask them to change their links. Once complete, they'd redirect the mirror site to their own commercial site.
So, keep an eye on your own link profile and theirs, just to make sure none of those links are changing.
-
We see scraped content all the time. Occasionally we see scraped HTML in full form but slightly edited.
In general I'd do the following:
- Disavow those domains in GSC. Also consider disavowing any domains pointing links at the mirror sites. It could be possible that they are building up junk links to a mirror site which canonicals your site. No idea why anyone would do that but worth covering your bases.
- Submit DMCA notices to Google, their webhost, etc.
- Take a look through server logs for anything screwy. If you see tons of weird traffic from countries that aren't relevant to your business, you might decide to block them with your .htaccess file.
- Certainly make sure nothing has been changed on your own site (canonicals, common Wordpress hacks, etc.), though nothing is suggesting to me that that has happened.
Other than that I would just keep an eye on it and keep an eye on Google Search Console.
-
Hi,
From what I read it looks similar to these cases - https://moz.com/community/q/getting-different-search-queries-in-google-webmaster & http://moz.com/community/q/chinese-site-ranking-for-our-brand-name-possible-hack
In these cases - sites where hacked using a vulnerability in a Wordpress slider - they copied sites they wanted to target on to some of the hacked domains and used other hacked domains to point links to them. At that point they were trying to redirect traffic from genuine e-commerce sites to bogus ones.
You could try to contact the site owners & tell them they have been hacked. At the same time file a complaint @Google
rgds,
Dirk
-
Some basic scraping maybe common, but they have gone out of there way to backlink to you...
Have you checked there metrics on open site explore...? Checked whois?
-
As far as I know website scraping is not uncommon, apart from the backlinks
-
I am honest I am still a little puzzled. But if what you are describing is what is happening. Something very strange is going on. I have not heard of it before.
A totally different domain, that you did not build is linking to your site with the exact copy of a page that it is linked to. If that is the case, your site is being specifically targeted. Someone has to have gone out of there way to copy your site and then re-build it on a different domain.
This is what I would do:-
I would contacting google asap.
Can you find who owns the site on whois?
Check the wayback machine to find out what the site was previously
User open site explorer to track the nature of the links on the other domain. .
And wow... that is unbelievable if it is correct...
-
Yes, sorry but I thought that was clear from the beginning.
If I click to the console links I am directed to the mirrored page in these domains. That's exactly how I saw them, otherwise I coudn't discover them
-
That console part provides clickable links. So that goes back to my original question. Can you click through to the domain and see a mimic copy of your site? Or is it simply showing you a link that clicks to nothing?
-
In the console there is a section called (translating into English) "Links pointing to your site"
Traffic has not changed, in fact these do not appear in GA referrals.
I can see all these domains, either the mirrorer paged, or the actual genuine pages pertaining to them originally. You cannot reach the mirrored pages via the menu in hp
-
Where in google search console are they reported?
Also to be clear, nothing has happened to your site. ie traffic has not changed. However you have found "strange" links in search console? Which do not click through to anything?
Or as I am still not clear - have you found another domain, that mimics your site that you can actually see?
-
Exactly, I am confused too.
Indeed, Goole Search Console reports do list them, but I can't see them in the html
Instance, I find this
<form <span="" class="html-tag" data-mce-mark="1">id="search_mini_form" action="http://mydomain.ext/it/catalogsearch/result/" method="get">
and also images hosted in the scraped websites's domain
Also, these pages apparently are under these domains that in turn appear to be real websites equally unaware of the scam
</form>
-
I am a little confused.
Are you saying that an exact copy of a unique page you have created on your website is on another domain name (which you know nothing about) and then that site is linked to your site, ie via a backlink?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Moz spam score 16 for some pages - Never a manual penalty: Disavow needed?
Hi community, We have some top hierarchy pages with spam score 16 as per Moz due to the backlinks with very high spam score. I read that we could ignore as long as we are not employing paid links or never got a manual penalty. Still we wanna give a try by disavowing certain domains to check if this helps. Anyway we are not going to loose any backlink score by rejecting this low-quality backlinks. Can we proceed? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Nuisance visitors to non active page. What's going on?
Hi Guys, for the past several months, I get high volume of searches on a non-existing page /h/9249823.html. These searches come from all over the world from different domains and have a zero session duration. They are automatically forwarded to my home page. The source re Google Analytics is 12-reasons-for-seo.com. The full referrer is 12.reasons-for-seo.com/seo2php. Any idea what is provoking this activity? Any chance it's screwing with my legitimate search results or rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lysarden0 -
Page drops from index completely
We have a page that is ranking organically at #1 but over the past couple of months the page has twice dropped from a search term entirely. There don't appear to be any issues with the page in Search Console and adding the page on https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url seems to fix the issue. The search term we're tracking that drops is in the URL for the page and is the h1 of the page. Here is a screenshot of the ranking over the past few months: https://jmp.sh/akvaKGF What could cause this to happen? There is nothing in search console that shows any problems with the page. The last time this happened the page completely dropped on all search terms and showed up again after submitting the url to google manually. This time it dropped on just one search term and reappeared the next day after manually submitting the page again. akvaKGF
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | russell_ms0 -
Scraping Website and Using Our Clients Info
One of our clients on Moz has noticed that another website has been scraping their website and pulling lots of their content without permission. We would like to notify Google about this company but are not sure if that is the right remedy to correct the problem. They appear in search results on Google using the client's name so they seem to be use page titles etc with the client's name in them. Several of the SERP links link to their own website but it pulls in our client's web page. Was hoping anyone could perhaps provide some additional options on how to attack this problem?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | InTouchMK0 -
Canonical tags being direct to "page=all" pages for an Ecommerce website
I find it alarming that my client has canonical tags pointing to "page=all" product gallery pages. Some of these product gallery pages have over 100 products and I think this could effect load time, especially for mobile. I would like to get some insight from the community on this, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Plugin to duplicate CMS pages, changing the location
Hi all, We have recently noticed a rise in local business websites using a plugin to duplicate hundreds of pages changing only the location in the h1 tag and the page description, we're pretty sure this is a black hat technique allowing them to rank for all locations (although the duplicate page content must not be doing them any favours). An example of this is http://www.essexcarrecovery.co.uk We would like to know what plugin they are using as we think there may be better ways to use this, we may be able to create original location pages faster than we do now? Also why does not seem to be too detrimental to the businesses SEO as surely this method should be damaging?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | birdmarketing0 -
Website Hacked now it's not Ranking
One of my domains was hacked right before I took over managing it. The hacker created around 100 links for simply grotesque things. After I took over I erased the entire site, rebuilt from scratch, new server (inmotion), rewrote every page, robots.txt every offending page, and even 301 just in case 404s were hurting me. I am now almost a month in and I have seen zero movement on anything rankings based. This is not a bad domain it was registered in 2008 and has a few decent citations because of the Doc's medical license. They registered for BBB in November and have a 30 year old listing citation from them based on business establishment. I must be going crazy but it's not ranking for anything except the homepage. I didn't know Google could hold a grudge for so long. The only ranking I can sometimes achieve is through Google Places which still has to compete with tough domains. I've already put in a reconsideration request and received a response stating the following: We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Just check it for yourself I know it's a work in progress but I'm not even considered relevant on page 50! And the crap links are still indexed!! A search for a keyword I'm aiming for with my client's name followed after gives me no results. I am currently using wordpress, yoast xml, and single keyword focusses. My market is tough but no way I can not rank for the keyword and my name.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | allenrocks0 -
Redirecting doesn't rank on google
We are redirecting our artist's official website to copenhagenbeta.dk. We have two artists (Nik & Jay and Burhan G) that top ranks on Google (first on page 1), but one of them (Lukas Graham) doesn't rank at all. We use the same procedure with all artists. http://copenhagenbeta.dk/index.php?option=com_artistdetail&task=biography&type=overview&id=49 Doesn't rank but the old artist page still does. Is it the old page that tricks Google to think that this is the active page for the artist?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Morten_Hjort0