What is the Google Redirect Hijack Exploit?

First a little background on what the Google Redirect Hijack Exploit is, why it is a problem and then we will get to the fix.

Some webmasters may be using the 302 redirect to link to pages on your site.

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect; search engines should (in my opinion) handle temporary redirects as just that temporary. This means they should not be included in SE results as they are not permanent urls, they are temporary file references that are subject to change at whim by the webmaster.

There are many good reasons to use redirect urls but with anything, there is also caution that must be exercised by the webmaster using the redirect and how it affects the site that is being redirected to.

In most cases, the webmaster of the site being redirected to (the landing page) should never have to worry about how another webmaster does their redirects. If the redirecting webmaster links to your site (the landing site) with a redirect, this shouldn’t concern you, unless you want Page Rank from the referring site. Temporary redirects (302 code) do not pass Page Rank, but that’s another article ;)

Google, for some unknown reason, is picking up these redirects and saying the content of the the landing page belongs to the redirect url.

Your page still exists, but now Google sees it as being duplicated; once on your site and again via the temporary redirect url; even though it is the same exact page; Google sees it as 2 different pages.

This triggers the duplicate content filter at Google and can cause a dramatic drop in traffic for what is, essentially, original content on your site.

I know Google will fix this eventually, but to be honest with you, I’m tired of waiting ;) and thanks to the WebmasterWorld Forums, poster Idaho and this thread, I was able to successfully remove hijacking urls from the Google database within 24 hours.

My recommendation is ... if you are worried about this; if it takes time away from productively adding content to your pages, building links into your site, etc., then you should remove the redirect urls. If you aren't worried, then don't be. Just continue following the Action Guide and being productive. :)

It isn't that hard, but it is important to follow all the steps completely; if you skip a step, you risk having your pages worse off than they are now with the exploit intact.

Here are the steps we will follow to complete this tutorial:

• Locate redirect Urls in Google
• Prepare redirect Urls for removal from the Google Index
• Create and verify "Url Removal" account with Google;
• Insert noindex/nofollow robots tag into the redirect's landing pages on your site;
• Log into your "Url Removal" account at Google; and copy/paste the redirect Urls into the proper form in your UR account and submit;
• Verify all redirect Urls are listed in "pending";
• Remove noindex/nofollow tags from your pages;
• After 24 hours; final thoughts and completing the process of removing the Google hijack redirect exploit.

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