Site Hijack? Something weird is happening!

renegade · 19-12-04

I've just found this page (which isn't part of CantBarsed.com) which has started sending thousands of referrals to us in the last day or two:

[Remove]http://www.freestuffsiteonly.com/xray.html

via this page on that domain: /9.html

Now that page is a complete rip of our page with their adsense ad at the top of the page: pub-4422321779990549

At the bottom of the xray.html you can join them and it's an affiliate program which I don't like the look of.

The questions on my mind (given we're suffering in the current Google shake-up) are:

1) Have we been Hi-jacked - it seems odd to complain about traffic to our site!

2) Is this going to be seen as duplicate content - I'm guessing yes since it's a rip

Any suggestions as to what should I do now would be greatly appreciated.

All very worrying.

renegade · 19-12-04

On the root of the site there is a contact form and email address so I'd like to send them an email but I'm not sure what to say, at the very least they have stolen my content.

Again any help gratefully appreciated.

renegade · 19-12-04

Sorry about posting to my own thread but on digging deeper:
/8.html is a rip of creditcards.com
/4.htm is a rip of a-shoponline.com
/3.htm is a rip of 100best-credit-cards.com

accelerator · 26-12-04

Joe

I had a look at these sites. When I go to them the "Do you want to install Chinese characters" IE pop up comes up. I'm guessing these sites result from people in China signing up for Google AdSense, then copying high ranked sites and adding a Google AdWords banner.

Why don't you try reporting this abuse to Google and see whether they will terminate the AdSense account?

Rgds

accelerator

renegade · 27-12-04

The page has changed now so it doesn't directly affect me ATM but I emailed the owners of the other sites so maybe they took action, thanks for your input though and if it happens again I will contact google adsense.

I've also had a couple of mates report they couldn't get onto my domain because another one popped up instead, I'm presuming spyware infections on their machine but it's becoming increasingly annoying.