A new type of search spam

[Suleyman Okan]

I ran into this SERP manipulation system today. Has anyone seen anything like this?

The 4 results below the first one all have some common characteristics:

• They use random sounding domain names & extensions.
• They all redirect to a .com domain named myaahc.
• Not only that, but they actually redirect to 2 URLs, top 2 to one, bottom 2 to another.
• All articles on this site are borderline nonsensical and read as if they are machine written.

So disappointing.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I'm seeing these pop up as well (I live in Pittsburgh).



I think I understand why these are showing up in the SERPs...

The status code that's being returned is a 307 status code, which means "Temporary Redirect" - See an explanation from Yoast here.

Whoever did this is pretty smart... in the spammy sort of way They have found a way to trick Google into thinking those URLs will come back at some point in the near future, while still redirecting to their page that's cluttered with ads.

This is a horrible user experience, and should be reported to the Webspam team. It falls under the category of "sneaky redirects" so that's how it should be reported.

Pretty simple trick if you know how to write a redirect in your .htaccess file.

 

[Suleyman Okan]

Thanks Eric, I was wondering how they managed to get all 4 to the SERP. So even with an 307 you get listed by the content on the end of the redirect. Well, I submitted the report.