What do you do if your search engine listings get Hijacked?
This is something i never really talked about but relevant to seo and search engine optimization. It deals with a common answer to a question you may some day need the answer to or you may already have or someday will find yourself in this situation, as a websmaster or website owner or anyone that published something on the web.
You wake up one morning, do your usual routine and you happen to notice that your website's url has changed in the search listings. Curious, you click the link which seems to be your websites exact title, description and for some reason a different url, and the link you click take you to something that looks like your website, but chopped up or completely the same with your exact meta tags on the page. Your search listing no longer takes you to your site but takes you to some other site, so what now?
Well an initial reaction would be to panic, why? Well because your search listings have just been stolen, when this first happen to me i had thought that my url had been hijacked, but after going to my site and seeing it intact, i soon realized someone had copied my exact page, and their page upon being indexed wiped my page out of the search engines index. So now what do you do?
Well theres a couple of things you can try to do. You can contact the search engine and notify them about the situation. They seem to get the situation straightened out very fast if you contact them. You can also contact the owner of the website, sometimes chances are someone made a mistake, while copying an article for example, and they accidently use your meta info. In this case you can contact them and if it was a mistake you can be sure they will remove the page. Other times its done completely intentional.
When its done intentionally, to tell you the truth it just pisses me off. People put alot of work into things they do and some people could care less, for greed or what have you. For example, a seasoned webmaster will usually know the top 10 websites listed in their favorite search engine for their sites main search term. Now if they have been their for years, and all of a sudden they see a new website potentially taking their traffic, because they have a better product or just feel threatened im sure more often then not someone does something to knock a site back down, even if its only temporary.
Now i could be completely wrong, but to tell you the truth, there isnt anything stopping anyone from doing it. So i know i havent done it, but im wondering how many people, and companies have done stuff like that to their competition. Because really if they cant prove they did it, then they really cant go around saying so and so did this. Corruption on the web is something i think is neglected, there is still no one to watch over everything, and there cant be either because their is just to many to watch and its ever increasing.
The webs changed alot since the days it was considered the wild west, but in many ways the pure nature of the web is to continue in that state, in many aspects it still is the wild west, its just not as wild as it was 10 years ago. There continues to be new booms such as myspace and youtube and an ever increasing internet audience. As more competition floods the various markets it opens up a stronger need for improvement on current and future product, customer service and usability. More competition means less potential new sales in the short run, mainly because of the stiff competition, but in the long run those that continue improving their product through innovation and most of all common sense will ultimatley be the ones that capture the majority of a market and thrive.
Getting your url hijacked or search engine listed hijacked sucks. It happens, but before you over react, just relax and think it through logically. This is a situation that you can get taken care off, if it does happen to you. It could be months before your listings come back, but eventually they will, and other than thats theres nothing you can really do about it, but wait.
Toodley Doo
You wake up one morning, do your usual routine and you happen to notice that your website's url has changed in the search listings. Curious, you click the link which seems to be your websites exact title, description and for some reason a different url, and the link you click take you to something that looks like your website, but chopped up or completely the same with your exact meta tags on the page. Your search listing no longer takes you to your site but takes you to some other site, so what now?
Well an initial reaction would be to panic, why? Well because your search listings have just been stolen, when this first happen to me i had thought that my url had been hijacked, but after going to my site and seeing it intact, i soon realized someone had copied my exact page, and their page upon being indexed wiped my page out of the search engines index. So now what do you do?
Well theres a couple of things you can try to do. You can contact the search engine and notify them about the situation. They seem to get the situation straightened out very fast if you contact them. You can also contact the owner of the website, sometimes chances are someone made a mistake, while copying an article for example, and they accidently use your meta info. In this case you can contact them and if it was a mistake you can be sure they will remove the page. Other times its done completely intentional.
When its done intentionally, to tell you the truth it just pisses me off. People put alot of work into things they do and some people could care less, for greed or what have you. For example, a seasoned webmaster will usually know the top 10 websites listed in their favorite search engine for their sites main search term. Now if they have been their for years, and all of a sudden they see a new website potentially taking their traffic, because they have a better product or just feel threatened im sure more often then not someone does something to knock a site back down, even if its only temporary.
Now i could be completely wrong, but to tell you the truth, there isnt anything stopping anyone from doing it. So i know i havent done it, but im wondering how many people, and companies have done stuff like that to their competition. Because really if they cant prove they did it, then they really cant go around saying so and so did this. Corruption on the web is something i think is neglected, there is still no one to watch over everything, and there cant be either because their is just to many to watch and its ever increasing.
The webs changed alot since the days it was considered the wild west, but in many ways the pure nature of the web is to continue in that state, in many aspects it still is the wild west, its just not as wild as it was 10 years ago. There continues to be new booms such as myspace and youtube and an ever increasing internet audience. As more competition floods the various markets it opens up a stronger need for improvement on current and future product, customer service and usability. More competition means less potential new sales in the short run, mainly because of the stiff competition, but in the long run those that continue improving their product through innovation and most of all common sense will ultimatley be the ones that capture the majority of a market and thrive.
Getting your url hijacked or search engine listed hijacked sucks. It happens, but before you over react, just relax and think it through logically. This is a situation that you can get taken care off, if it does happen to you. It could be months before your listings come back, but eventually they will, and other than thats theres nothing you can really do about it, but wait.
Toodley Doo
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