Google warning: is your site abused through redirects?
April 4, 2009 by admin
Google recently wrote in one of its official blogs that it is possible for spammers to take advantage of your website without ever setting a virtual foot in your server. Spammers can do this by abusing open redirects.
What are open redirects?
Many websites use links that redirect their website visitors to another page. Some redirects are left open to any arbitrary destination. These redirects can be abused by spammers to trick web surfers and search engines into following links that seem to be pointing to your website although they redirect to a spammy website.
That means that people who think that they visit your website will be redirected to highly questionable web pages that might contain adult content, viruses, malware or phishing attempts.
Which redirects on your website could be abused?
Spammers are very inventive. According to Google, they have managed to use the redirect spam on a wide range of websites, including the websites of large well-known companies and the websites of small local government agencies.
For example, the following redirection types can be abused:
- Scripts that redirect users to a file on the server can be abused by spammers. The links on your website could look like this:
http://www.example.com/download.php?url=http://www…
http:///www.example.com/get/pdf/?http://www…
- Site search result pages with automatic redirect options. If the result pages of your internal site search feature contain an URL variable that sends your website visitors to other pages, spammers might be able to exploit them:
http://www.example.com/search?q=keyword&page=1&url=…
- Affiliate tracking links. Affiliate tracking links often allow people to direct website visitors to other pages. Spammers might enter their own URLs in the tracking links. Example:
http://www.example.com/track.php?affid=123&url=…
- Proxy pages. Proxy sites send people through to other websites and they can be abused by spammers:
http://myproxy.example.com/?url…
- Interstitial pages. Some websites show an interstitial page when users leave a website to let users know that the information found on the link is not under their control. These URLs usually look like this:
http://www.example.com/redirect/http://www…
http://www.example.com/out?http://www…
http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?http://www…
How to find out if your website is abused
Even if you find none of the URLs above on your website, your site still may have open redirects. Do the following to check if your website is abused by spammers:
- Make a site search on Google
Go to Google.com and search for “site:yourdomain.com”. Replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name. If you see web pages that have nothing to do with your website then it’s likely that someone exploits a security hole on your website.
- Check your web server logs for URL parameters like “=http:” or “=//”. If your redirection URLs get a lot of traffic, this could also be caused by spammers.
- If you get user complaints about content or malware that you know cannot be found on your website then your website users might have seen your URL before they were redirected to the malware site.
What you can do to protect your website
It’s not easy to to make sure that your redirects aren’t exploited. The reason for that is that an open redirect is not a bug or a security flaw. There are some things that you can do to protect your website:
- Check the referrer. Your redirect scripts should only work if they area accessed from another web page of your website. The redirect script should not work if the user accesses the script directly or from a search engine.
- If possible, make sure that the script can only redirect to web pages and files that are on your own websites. You could use a whitelist of allowed destination domains.
- Use the robots.txt file of your website to exclude search engines from the redirect scripts on your website. That will make your website less attractive for hackers.
- Add a signature or a checksum to your redirect links so that only you can use the script.
Open redirect abuse is a big issue for Google right now. If you secure your scripts, spammers will move over to other websites and leave your website alone.
Official Google statement: how to get high rankings
October 31, 2008 by admin
This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google’s Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get a high ranking in Google’s search result pages.
The blog article confirms that the methods that are used by Complete SEO to get high rankings are correct. But read it for yourself:
Inbound links are important but content is even more important
Google’s Maile Ohye writes the following about inbound links in his article:
“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance.”
Nothing new here. If many related websites link to your site, and if these links look natural, this will help you rankings on Google a lot.
However, links are not the most important ranking factor. Maile Ohye gives a concrete example:
“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.
As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking. “
The website’s content is mentioned as one of the strongest ranking factors. The inbound links are additional. That makes sense. The content of your website tells Google what your website is about.
If you want to get a high ranking for the keyword “used cars in dallas” but your web pages are about microwave ovens then you won’t get high rankings for that keyword.
For that reason, it is very important that you optimize your web pages for the keywords for which you want to get high rankings before you try to get links from other sites.
Google analyzes over 200 ranking factors
According to the article in Google’s blog, Google analyzes more than 200 signals (we call them ‘ranking factors’) to specify the position of a web page in the search results:
“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”
It’s a simple two-step process
Getting high rankings on Google is a simple two-step process:
- You must optimize your web page contents so that Google can find out what your website is about. Optimize your web pages for your keywords so that Google knows that your website is relevant to these keywords and your topic.
- Other websites must confirm that your website is about that topic. That’s what inbound links are for.
It’s as simple as that. If your website passes Google’s analysis of all ranking factors, it will get a top 10 ranking.
SEO Link Building
October 16, 2008 by admin
Link building is an important factor for SEO success. If you want to get your website on first page of Google for profitable keywords and key phrases, you need to build links for your site. Building links means getting other websites or web pages to link back to your website through keyword-optimized anchor texts.
In order to see results from link building, the quality of links is very important. If you can get a few high PR sites to provide links back to your website, it will boost your rankings more than getting 100 websites with PR 0 to link back to you.
Now, let me share with you a few tips to build links for SEO success:
Link building strategy #1: Write quality content. If you write quality content and put them up on your site, you can attract tons of links back to your site. This is because when your content is good or even controversial, you will attract attention. People will share your content around on the Internet by providing links to your site at different forums, blogs and other social platforms. If your content is newsworthy, people will submit your link to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit.
Link building strategy #2: Write and submit articles. Article marketing is a great way to get back links to your site. For each article that you write, you can include your site’s URL in the author resource box. Remember to place keywords or key phrases that you wish to optimize as the anchor text of your links to increase relevancy. Then submit your articles to article directories. There are manual article submission services that you can leverage on. Just Google it and you should be able to find some reputable vendors around.
Link building strategy #3: Through partnership and collaborations. If you are a sponsor or speaker for an event, do not miss the opportunity to get a link back to your website. These are usually authority websites and getting backlinks from them will definitely help to boost your site’s link popularity. Moreover, you should contact your suppliers, affiliates or business associates and see whether it is possible for them to place your website URL on their websites.
Link building strategy #4: Submit your website to directories. Directory links are great one-way links. Come up with a few versions of title, description and keywords that best describe your website. Then, submit your website manually to a list of SEO-friendly directories. If you do not have a list of directory, you can always outsource this time-consuming work to the freelances or professionals.
If you want success with SEO, remember – always be building links.
How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site
October 16, 2008 by admin
Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site.
How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.
1. Offer something in return
The easiest thing that you could offer is a link in return. However, not all webmasters want to exchange links.
There are many things that you could offer in exchange for a link. This could be a discount for your products, an ad on your website or even a simple hint.
If you find a broken link on a website, inform the webmaster about the link. Tell him that your own website might be a good replacement for the broken link (if it is).
2. Ask your current link partners
If another website already links to you then they might add another link to a different page on your website.
Getting a second link from existing link partners is much easier than getting new links because you don’t have to explain yourself anymore. The other webmaster already knows you and your site.
3. Make friends with people from your industry
Networking can help you to get links to your website. This works best with blogs that are related to your website.
Contact the blog owners and compliment on their sites. Do not ask for a link in your first contact. When you’ve a good relationship with the blog owner, you might inform him about a new product or a new article that you’ve written.
Chances are that you’ll get a link from the blog then. These links from related blogs have a great impact on the position of your website in Google’s search results.
4. Show that other webmasters already linked to your website
It’s easier for people to do something if they see that other people have done the same thing before. If many other websites link to your website, you could mention this in your link request.
If a well known website mentioned your site, that’s even better: “As you might have seen on NYTimes.com, we’ve published a new product. This might be interesting to the visitors of your website.”
5. Offer something that other people don’t have
This is the easiest way to get links. If you have a report with ground-breaking new information or something other that’s very interesting and only available on your website then it will be very easy to get links to the page that contains that information.