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
-
Social engineering content detected
hello, i have Got Social engineering content detected Message on webmaster tools on my around 20 sites, i have checked on server cleared, all unnecessary folders, But still i am not getting rectified this issue. One more error i got is Remove the deceptive content, But there is no any content on website which can harm my site, so kindly help & tell us steps we need take to resolve this issue, i am facing it from 10 days, yet not able to resolve, thnx in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rohitiepl0 -
How many links can you have on sitemap.html
we have a lot of pages that we want to create crawlable paths to. How many links are able to be crawled on 1 page for sitemap.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny0 -
Why is this Page Ranking for such a competitive keyword?
Hello MOZ Community! I have a question, I am hoping someone can help me understand. I am looking at this URL: http://goo.gl/BkSish ...it is ranking for this Keyword: POS Systems Now, this seems to be a pretty new URL, with few links being generated to it, as seen here: Open Site Explorer: http://moz.com/researchtools/ose/comparisons?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shopkeep.com%2Fpos-system Majestic SEO: https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/link-profile?folder=&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shopkeep.com%2Fpos-system&oq=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shopkeep.com%2Fpos-system&IndexDataSource=F&wildcard=1 QUESTION: Can someone help us understand how or why this page is ranking so well, so quickly, for such a competitive Keyword? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mstpeter0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Update: Copied Website
So I discovered a website the other day that is a complete duplicate of ours: justinchina.co.uk This is our website: petmedicalcenter.com . Thanks to help from Erica, I dug in deeper to see why this was happening. It seems that the justinchinca.co.uk which is hosted by GoDaddy has their A Record pointing at our web host. So that being said, our website does not seem to be hacked which is good news. Would this still cause an issue with our Google rankings? Our host, Host Monster said to contact GoDaddy and GoDaddy said that a domain owner can point their URL to anywhere that they choose. Anyway, any feedback would be helpful. Thanks for everyone thus far that has helped me. Brant
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BCB11210 -
Site architecture change - +30,000 404's in GWT
So recently we decided to change the URL structure of our online e-commerce catalogue - to make it easier to maintain in the future. But since the change, we have (partially expected) +30K 404's in GWT - when we did the change, I was doing 301 redirects from our Apache server logs but it's just escalated. Should I be concerned of "plugging" these 404's, by either removing them via URL removal tool or carry on doing 301 redirections? It's quite labour intensive - no incoming links to most of these URL's, so is there any point? Thanks, Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Google 'most successful online businesses'
how come this guy has all but 1 of the top ten results? (UK results - I'm guessing same in USA?) - with thin content on a spammed keyword on multi-sub domains? How can we 'white hat' guys compete if stuff like this is winning?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheInternetWorks0 -
Using Programmatic Content
My company has been approached a number of times by computer generated content providers (like Narrative Science and Comtex). They are providing computer generated content to a number of big name websites. Does anyone have any experience working with companies like this? We were burned by the first panda update because we were busing boilerplate forms for content
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SuperMikeLewis0