Black Hat SEO eBook - Pagerank Hijacking - 302 Exploit and Redirects

Pagerank Hijacking

Page Hijack: The 302 Exploit, Redirects and Google

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 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.

What is it ?

A pagerank hijack is a technique exploiting the way search engines interpret certain commands that a web server can send to a visitor. In essence, it allows a hijacking website to replace pages belonging to target websites in SERPS.

When a visitor searches for a certain term a hijacking webmaster can replace the pages that appear for this search with pages that (s)he controls. The new pages that the hijacking webmaster inserts into the search engine are "virtual pages", meaning that they don't exist as real pages.

Technically speaking they are "server side scripts" and not pages, so the searcher is taken directly from the search engine listings to a script that the hijacker controls. The hijacked pages appear to the searcher as copies of the target pages, but with another web address ("URL") than the target pages.

Once a pagerank hijack has taken place, a malicious hijacker can redirect any visitor that clicks on the target page listing to any other page the hijacker chooses to redirect to. If this redirect is hidden from the search engine spiders, the hijack can be sustained for an indefinite period of time.

Possible abuses are to make adult / porn / gambling / pharmacy pages appear as popular or high ranked pages in the search engines, set up false bank frontends, false storefronts, etc.

Read a complete chapter on pagerank hijacking in The Black Hat SEO eBook.