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help with url redirection from google

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help with url redirection from google
Hi, I don't know if you can help me but I am having a tremendous problem. Currently I am the webmaster for www.seasidegolf.com. We have been number one or two in google for the keyword phrase"golf Packages" for almost 3 years now. Today something crazy happened and I have been sharing it with every search engine forum and individual I can find. Maybe someone can help. Someone, www.golftourdesk.com, has copied my entire site, and I mean everything, and put it on their server. That's fine with me, but in google, if you click on the link for www.seasidegolf.com, you are redirected, via a redirect page, to this copied site. I need to know how this is possible? and what I should be doing about it? It completely boggles my mind. Any advice would be a great help. Thanks for you time.
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Quote:
Currently I am the webmaster for www.seasidegolf.com.

Yay!...I knew I wasn't the only golf lover :)

When I go to your site and the other one I see two different websites, no redirect or anything either.

The seconds URL actually redirects to travelgolf.com

Last edited by:

Paul: Jan 15, 2003, 9:23 AM
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Re: [Paul] help with url redirection from google In reply to
go to www.seasidegolf.com/hwy9.htm

now go to www.golftourdesk.com/hwy9.htm

see what i mean....the crazy part is that if you got to google and type in www.seasidegolf.com you get one result, my web site. However, clicking on the link to my web site from google takes you to the copied site. that is the real question i have. how did they steal my link from google?
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Your best bet is to send a 'nice' email, asking them what the hell is going on. If someone did that to my site, I would be far from happy. Its basically a copyright infringment. Just see what their game is...and why they decided to go ahead with copying your site, without your approval. I had a very similar thing with templates.ws, where another site copied all of my template, backgrounds, and small amount of clipart listed on my site. After 3 long weeks of negotiating with them (fortunatly one of my mates is a lawyer in Canada...heheh), he finally gave up, and took it all down Smile

Hope that helps Smile

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Hmm I see what you mean. Very strange. The 4th result on Yahoo still points to your site but Google doesn't.

To start you may wish to email the people ripping you off so they know you are on to them, then I'd email google and ask how the URL got changed.

You may find helpful links here:

http://www.google.com/about.html


Try here too:

http://groups.google.com/...blic.support.general
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
That's really interesting! If you hold your mouse over the link, you can see it's really for golftourdesk.com.

I would be more bothered by somebody copying my site than the google issue, and work back from that. Contact COINFOTECH.COM, their host, about copyright violations, etc.


Domain Name: GOLFTOURDESK.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Lewis, Robert (RLR208) aceweb45@AOL.COM
Robert Lewis
3906 W Ina Rd 200
Tucson, AZ 85741
US
520-544-9310 520-219-5768

Record expires on 17-Aug-2003.
Record created on 17-Aug-2000.
Database last updated on 15-Jan-2003 12:46:31 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

MAVERICK.ROCKIESGOLF.COM 209.12.35.141
NS2.COINFOTECH.COM 63.116.176.8

ROCKIESGOLF.COM is also on COINFOTECH.COM

Last edited by:

ArmyAirForces: Jan 15, 2003, 9:51 AM
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Re: [Paul] help with url redirection from google In reply to
we know who they are. they are a major competitor of ours. By emailing them and letting them know we are onto them, they may take these copied links down before I can get through to google and show them.

however, getting thorugh to google has proven a bit tedious.

yahoo looks fine for some reason, same with other search engines, but they stole my google link.

look at googles cache of www.golftourdesk.com and you see my site there.

thanks for the reply. :)
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Notice the page headers.....

<!-- Mirrored from www.golftourdesk.com/contact.htm by HTTrack Website Copier/3.x [XR&CO'2002], Thu, 07 Nov 2002 20:50:07 GMT -->
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
i have no problem with someone copying my site.

it happens...but when they manipulate a search engine to recognize the copied site as the origianl, then i have a problem.

if this is the case, i would copy all of my competitors sites and steal their search engine links.

but then again, i would never out another webmaster through this. Smile
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
what does that page header mean?
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
You don't have a problem with a competitor copying your web site?

What competitor is going to copy a competing web site, buy a domain for it, pay the hosting and bandwidth fees - and do so without malicious intent?

They didn't manipulate your site just to get the google placement.
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Its just proof of how they copied it.

That software is darn scary too. I just made an exact copy of my own site in under a minute.
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
That's the software they used to copy your site and maintain the mirror.

You can read about it here: http://www.httrack.com/
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Re: [Paul] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Indeed, if somebody used that software the same way to one of my sites I'd have the e-mails and paper flying in a heartbeat.
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Re: [ArmyAirForces] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Something like this happening to me would make me want to rip my hair out, and the hair (pubic too) of the person who ripped off my site.
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Re: [Paul] help with url redirection from google In reply to
i have contacted google now. i feel the need to do something malicious to his sites but i won't stoop to that level....yet...
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
One thing you can do to prevent anything further is use mod rewrite:

Code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*EmailSiphon [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Wget [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*EmailWolf [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*HTTrack [OR]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.aol.com [L]
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Ahh sweet joy :)

Code:
HTTrack3.22-3-noV6+swf launched on Wed, 15 Jan 2003 18:25:20

Information, Warnings and Errors reported for this mirror:
note: the hts-log.txt file, and hts-cache folder, may contain sensitive information,
such as username/password authentication for websites mirrored in this project
do not share these files/folders if you want these information to remain private

18:25:21 Warning: File has moved from www.adsql.com/robots.txt to http://www.aol.com
18:25:24 Warning: File has moved from www.adsql.com/ to http://www.aol.com

18:25:24 Info: No data seems to have been transfered during this session! : restoring previous one!

Last edited by:

Paul: Jan 15, 2003, 10:26 AM
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Oops typo, remove the last [OR]
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
1) Screenshot everything. (Google search results, HTML source code, etc.)

2) Save all your email message correspondences between you and the competitor (I know...simple advice, but let me tell you that it is the simple things that you overlook that screws you in the end...and save the messages and above screenshots on an external storage device, since if your hard disk crashes and you lose the data, you're screwed...let me tell you from personal experience, these are important things to remember. Due to my hard drive crashing and not saving correspondences between a domain squatter, I've been unable to get back a TLD from the squatter, even with a federal trademark.)

Hope this helps.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me
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Re: [Stealth] help with url redirection from google In reply to
Here is what a google guru thinks happenned, although we cant fully explain 100% of this.

This guy had a higher page rank than me, so he copied my site using this software and then when google reindexed their sites, they indexed his site first because he has a higher pagerank.

Then google got to my site and thought i copied his so they kicked me out of the search engine.

However, the part no one can explain is the fact that my link in google, www.seasidegolf.com, now links to his copied site. Not even the google gurus can explain how he did this.
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Re: [Beck] help with url redirection from google In reply to
hmmm, were you hacked?

Boy this must suck. don't the wayback archive.org thingy that records sites on the net for evidence.

Why don't you just sue for damages? borrowing bits and pieces but your whole site, links, ratings, I bet a lot of customers went through them by accident.

That sucks the most! your lose of revenue and good standings in the community.

Good luck and hope you nail the bugger!

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile
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Re: [Paul] help with url redirection from google In reply to
In Reply To:
One thing you can do to prevent anything further is use mod rewrite:

Code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*EmailSiphon [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Wget [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*EmailWolf [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*HTTrack [OR]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.aol.com [L]


Paul, Thanks for this nice Tip. I was always afraid. But there is another similar software that does the same job. How do I prevent all such spidering softwares ? I am already using a simple JS to prevent copy/paste.
>> Nakul Goyal (SEO, Link Building Expert)
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