Javascript onclick redirects / porn sites...
-
We noticed around 7 websites which with domains that were just recently registered (with privacy protection).
They are using our website keywords/titles and brand name and the sites are mostly porn / junk sites. They don't link to our website directly but use a javascript onclick redirect which is why we think we aren't seeing them in our backlinks report. We've been in business for over 12 years and haven't come across sites like this before. We recently lost our first page rankings for a few of our highest converting key phrases and have been digging in to possible causes.
Just wondering if these sites could be impacting our results, and how to figure out if there are more like this?
Examples:
-
Hi Marcy,
If the sites are using your brand name and/or other brand terms, and your brand is copyrighted, you may be able to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request with Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1. As they note in the description on the tool, be very clear about whether the other site's actions actually constitute a violation of your copyright before filing the request.
I think it's unlikely that these new sites are impacting your site's performance in search - I was a little unclear about the JavaScript redirect, though (I'm at work and don't want to click on the links you posted on my work computer). Is it redirecting from their site to your site, or from their site to another site that is the porn/junk site? If it's the latter, that shouldn't be affecting your site at all. If it's the former, you may want to file disavow requests at the domain level for those sites just in case.
If your drop in rankings was caused by these new sites, I would expect to see a drop in performance across the board, rather than for specific queries, so I recommend that you keep digging on other reasons for the drop. I would take a look at the sites that are ranking now for the terms you've lost rankings for. How are they different from your site? What sites are ranking now that weren't ranking when you were on top? It may be that Google has decided that your site doesn't fulfill the search intent for those keywords, so taking a look at the sites that rank now will give you some insight into the kinds of pages that Google wants to rank for these terms. Since these were highly-converting terms for you, consider investing in PPC ads for these terms while you work to regain your organic presence. Good luck!
-
Hi Marcy
Here is a help section from Google on these sorts of issues - it covers everything from cloaking to content scraping, and doorway pages to other spam types.
I would also try contacting the webmasters and ask them to remove these redirects. If they do not respond or do not cooperate, take the steps in the link above from Google. Hope this helps!
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
-
Redirect Juice?
Hello all! I have a partner site that is linking their product page (step 1) to our product page (step 2) and then we instantly forward them to our shopping cart page (step 3) with that product added. Will my product page (step 2) get the SEO juice from our partners link (step 1) even though we instantly forward to our shopping cart page (step 3)? Curious about ways to technically do this correctly. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
Redirect Chains
Hi There, I have had conducted a few migrations recently and have a common issue which is this: HTTP (old site) -> HTTPS (old site) -> (HTTPS) (new site) Which causes a redirect chain. How should you prevent this before migration or fix it after migration? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayl870 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
Recovering from a site migration
Hi. I've been working on http://www.alwayshobbies.com/ for a number of months. All was fine, but then we had a site migration which involved a huge number of redirects. There's been a couple of similar moves in the past. As a result, rankings have plummeted. To resolve this, we're considering letting all the old pages 404 by turning of the redirects, and removing all links to them where we can. Some key pages could have canonicals added, but basically we're looking to purge as much as possible. Does this sound like a reasonable tactic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Site Navigation
Hi Mozzers, I am an SEO at uncommongoods.com and looking for your opinion on our site nav. Currently our nav & URLs are structured in 3 levels. From the top level down, they are: 1. Category ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden 2. Subcat ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath 3. Family ex:http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath/bath-accessories Right now, all levels are accessible from our top nav but we are considering removing the family pages. If we did that, Google could still find & crawl links to the family pages, but they would have to drill down to the subcat pages to find them. Do you guys think this would help or hurt our SEO efforts? Thanks! -Zack
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Redirecting Existing Domains to My Main Site
Hi I have a main property related website featuring different countries around the world. I also have many different seperate country websites 20+. All keyword rich domains with a good 9 years+ domain age and PR3's with decent links and moz rankings and unique content. Many of the sites are very low Alexa rank now and receive little traffic. I don't have the time now to spend on each of the individual domains and am wanting to consolidate them and their PR juice to the corresponding country page of my main website. My question is - is it possible - will google see this as me trying to manipulate them and is my main site likely to suffer from any penalties or downgrading? Thanks for your input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freecall0 -
Deferred javascript loading
Hi! This follows on from my last question. I'm trying to improve the page load speed for http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/. Currently, Google rate the page speed of the GZ site at 91/100 – with the javascript being the only place where points are being deducated. The only problem is, the JS relates to the trustpilot widget, and social links at the bottom of the page – neither of which work when they are deferred. Normally, we would add the defer attribute to the script tags, but by doing so it waits until the page is fully loaded before executing the scripts. As both the js I mentioned (reviews and buttons) use the document.Write command, adding this would write the code off the page and out of placement from where they should be. Anyone have any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
How to make SEF URL for PHP/MySQL web site
Hi mozzers! I'm fairly new to SEO topic, but I'm learning fast because all of you, so please take my warm thanks first! The problem: I have a web site based on PHP/MySQL that has no SEF addresses, it's made by unknown CMS, so I cannot use any extensions or modules, I have to write my own SEF extension. The question: Would you suggest me, please an article or idea, what I need to make my URLs search engine friendly? What's best to use: .htaccess or something else? This is the aforementioned web site: www.nortrak.bg Thanks a lot, Kolio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kolio_kolev0