Someone is redirecting their url to mine

[brightonseorob]

Hello,

I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing?

Many Thanks

Rob Martin

[ShaMenz]

Thanks for catching that Ryan! Having a bad copy/paste day

[RyanKent]

I believe the link you wish to share is: http://usablelayout.com/articles/automatically-break-out-iframe.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Rob,

If you can edit your template, you could add the piece of javascript below to the head of each page on your site.

As long as the visitor has javascript turned on in their browser, this will detect that the page is rendered on the wrong URL and send it back to the correct page, outside the Iframe.

You can find more about this on this page (thanks to Ryan for catching the broken link)

There is a nice bonus in that you will then see traffic from referring sites in your server logs. You can very easily follow up with webmasters who have been duped into providing the links - show them how the other site has fraudulently acquired a link from them and suggest that they correct the link to point to your site.

I love it when I find a way to eliminate those guys with the other hats AND get the benefit of all their hard work!

Have a great day,

Sha

[RyanKent]

I believe Sha's answer drills down to the root issue and addresses the original question best.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Rob,

First of all ...this is not a domain redirect.

What they are actually doing is pulling the content of your site into their own using an iframe.

They are not able to do anything through your site by doing this as the content is rendered by the browser and not their server.  So, the question is why they would do it.

Best guess: This could be someone who is planning to set up some kind of low quality site (possibly full of ads), but wants to build up backlinks for the domain. They can go to blogs, forums etc and leave comments & posts with their URL. The webmaster checks the URL and sees your site, so approves the comment or post...after a few months of doing this, BAM! they remove the iframe and let loose their real content.

hmmm...

Sha

[johnshearer]

Himansu is right just block from via .htaccess file

This brings us a bigger issue not often discussed. Since anyone can link or redirect to your site, this creates a dilemma for  search engines.

For example lets say I buy a porn site and decide to create links from that porn site to Portlandhaircuts.com, with malicious  intention for that site.

[OptimizeSmart]

You wont be penalised for such type of redirect. You can block all the traffic coming from their domain or IP via .htaccess file.

[brightonseorob]

Thanks for your response, that clears things up. It's just not something I've come across before. We are always dealing with content being stripped and websites using our GA but this was new to me. Strangely as it turns out they thought they were doing us a favour as they have closed their business now.

[AdiRste]

It could do, yes but highly unlikely. Do you have any idea what they might be achieving from this?

You say that you've contacted the company to get it removed so hopefully they should comply with this quickly. It would take Google a very long time to pick up on this anyhow. If the worst was to happen and you got penalised, you could just explain in Webmaster Tools and it would be fine plus you could sue them for a hefty sum as well. The chances of you getting penalised for this are next to nil anyway.

Can I suggest that you give them a call?

+48 914325555