[important]302 redirect

[dody]

Recently i got many emails asking about 302 redirect. At first, i was not really sure about it. Indexu use http header redirect method, that is use

Location:http://www.website.com

.
I think it's normal and almost all scripts use the same method. Even a big website like hotscripts.com use the same method.

Let make a few test:
- go to http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp
- then enter the following url
http://www.nicecoder.com/go.php?id=40
and
http://www.hotscripts.com/jump.php?l...87&jump_type=0

Both url will result 302 redirect.

The problem is 302 redirect will consider that you're hijacking other people websites. Here is taken from http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm

An explanation of the page hijack exploit using 302 server redirects. This exploit allows any webmaster to have his own "virtual pages" rank for terms that pages belonging to another webmaster used to rank for. Successfully employed, this technique will allow the offending webmaster ("the hijacker") to displace the pages of the "target" in the Search Engine Results Pages ("SERPS"), and hence (a) cause search engine traffic to the target website to vanish, and/or (b) further redirect traffic to any other page of choice.

This 302 redirect seem become a major issue recently. So i want to hear any idea from you guys to avoid unwanted problem. Perhaps some people will report your website as hijacker. Yes, it's true. I got email from webmaster who his website is listed in website that use indexu.

I'm thinking to modify go.php, remove header('Location:www.website.com'); and replace it with html redirect.

If someone here can explain more about 302 problem, this would be great. Btw, www.nicecoder.com's PR has droped to 4 from 6

[Chief]

I have had others email me with the same concern. He said to change it from a 302 to a 301 redirect. Any idea how???

[Chief]

Dody, I just did this: http://www.nicecoder.com/community/s...ead.php?t=2711

[inspireme]

unfortunatly html (javascript?) redirects are also badly frowned upon by search engines. i think the best thing is to play it straight with a standard link. Use a javascript counter on the link to keep stats

[Chief]

...Use a javascript counter on the link to keep stats

Any tips on doing that?

Can you lead me to the right file to remove HITS from the browse pages?

[dody]

html redirect, i mean using this code

<META HTTP-EQUIV='refresh' CONTENT='0'; URL='index.php'>

It will work like vbulletin's redirect when you're logging in or after posting a message.
The only purpose is we need to count HITS.

@Chief:
If you do not need to count hits, you may use direct link, using <%url%> rather than go.php?id=<%link_id%>

[inspireme]

redirects like you mentioned will damage the site because google hates being automatically redirected. At one stage spammers used javascript redirects to forward people from useful, pages], to spammy ones and google now penalises.

Search http://forums.seochat.com to find out about the hundreds of people with redirect problems. I suggest the best way to solve this for everybody is to use <%url%> its something im going to do very soon. (luckily im not serving the webmaster market which many of you are, most of my links would have no idea about all this)

using a permanent redirect (301) maybe a solution? I would really recommend posting of http://forums.seochat.com they all know a LOT more than i do, and im sure they can give you lots of advice.

[esm]

I suggest the best way to solve this for everybody is to use <%url%> its something im going to do very soon. (luckily im not serving the webmaster market which many of you are, most of my links would have no idea about all this)

We discussed in a recent post the idea of using <%url%> instead of go.php. Instead of counting the "go" hits, we would count the "hits" to the detail page. I even did a MOD for that for some folks. It is not quite the same but it can serve some purpose.



.

[inspireme]

im using hits to detail page mod anyway as some of my listings dont even have websites. Im sure a standard link <%url%> could be used with some javascript that counted the hits up... im not a programmer but this sounds to me like a possibility that would avoid redirect issues.

[dody]

@inspireme:
If js that open a small popup, it's possible to count. Without popup, i don't have any clue how can js can trigger php.

Popup, i believe most users will not like it.

[Frank71]

Forget the popup solution, I tested it two years agao and I had big problems with different popupblockers !
In my solution by example Google toolbar stoped the forwarding so the user gets errors or still stayed on the same site...

You should be very careful with this kind of solutions.

Frank

[dody]

Here is my solution using html redirect.
Edit /lib/link.class.php, locate to

function Go($id, $count = true)

      print "<meta http-equiv=\"Refresh\" content=\"0; URL=$url\">";
      //header ("Location: $url");

Test result

SEO Consultants Directory Check Server Headers - Single URI Results
Current Date and Time: 2005-04-29T02:47:33-0800
User IP Address: 202.152.172.1

#1 Server Response: http://www.nicecoder.com/indexu/demo/go.php?id=44608
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 09:47:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.10 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.10
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

It show 200 OK, rather than 302.
It seem it work well, right?
You can try here: http://www.nicecoder.com/indexu/demo

Another idea is using form submit, with using onload method.

      print "<body onload=document.go.submit()>";
      print "<form method='get' action='$url' name=go></form>";

But i prefer the 1st solution above.

[SamB]

like, <a href="go.php?id=<%id%>" rel=nofollow>Visit</a>
I use this method, and thus google won't visit go.php and won't count the go.php's as hijack pages.
But I don't know whether it's what I think, how do u guys think about it?

[Frank71]

I think links are so important that you'll have more success if you give also real linkpop to your partners. The redirect problem is only one mor epoint to set real links instead of counter links.

Frank

[dody]

Yeah that's good too. But rel=nofollow is google specific, other search engine still follow the link.

I'm not sure it's only google or other search engine will also consider hijacking. If it's only google, than your solution is perfect.