Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
What to do with internal spam url's google indexed?
I am in SEO for years but never met this problem. I have client who's web page was hacked and there was posted many, hundreds of links, These links has been indexed by google. Actually these links are not in comments but normal external urls's. See picture. What is the best way to remove them? use google disavow tool or just redirect them to some page? The web page is new, but ranks good on google and has domain authority 24. I think that these spam url's improved rankings too 🙂 What would be the best strategy to solve this. Thanks. k9Bviox
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrisZigurs0 -
Page title optimisation - Does suffix keywords matters?
Hi Moz community, We can see in many of the page titles; "brand & keyword" go after every topic like..... "best tiles for kitchen | vertigo tiles". Do Google count this suffix as any other word in page title or give low preference just because it has been repeated across every single page? What if the "keyword" is repeated with topic and brand name as well. I mean which one of the below 2 page titles gonna workout better in correlation with keyword and website authority ? best tiles for kitchen | vertigo tiles best tiles for kitchen | vertigo Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
I show different versions of the same page to the crawlers and users, but do not want to do anymore
Hello, While Google could not read JavaScript, I created two versions of the same page, one of them is for human and another is for Google. Now I do not want to serve different content to the search engine. But, I am worry if I will lose my traffic value. What is the best way to succeed it without loss? Can you help me?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kipra0 -
Hosting Multiple Websites Within The Same Server Space
Hi, So, I have a client who wants to host two websites (which you could refer to as sister sites) on the same hosting account. For some reason, I was under the impression that doing as much may be detrimental (for SEO purposes). Am I correct in thinking this? Can I get some back-up documentation or comments here? I look forward to hearing what you all have to say. Thanks for reading!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
Bad for SEO to have two very similar websites on the same server?
Is it bad for SEO to have two very similar sites on the same server? What's the best way to set this up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Is it wrong to have the same page represented twice in the Nav?
Hi Mozzers, I have a client that have 3 pages represented twice in the Nav. There are not duplicates since they land with the same URL. It seems odd to have this situation but I guess it make sense for my client to have those represented twice since these pages could fall into multiple categories? Is it a bad practice for SEO or is it a waste to have those in the NAV? Should I require to eliminate the extras? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Hiding content or links in responsive design
Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0