Jeffrey87 Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Hi, My site was recently "hacked" in the sense that Google was made to crawl a rogue page and came to believe it was the original site. This caused a catastrophic decline in Google position and decline in traffic. In researching the issue, it seemed that the solution was to install a forward-confirmed reverse DNS on the site. Yet I've found little information on how to actually implement this. I'm working on a code example I found, but I'm unsure exactly how to apply this even assuming I can get it to work. For those interested in this issue the original site is www.tickerfind.com , the duplicate site is www.handj.net. If you Google "tickerfind.com" you can get the cache, and from this you can see that Google thinks the site is found at handj.net. One of the puzzling things about the sample code (http://smbrown.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/verify-googlebot-forward-reverse-dns/) is that it appears to be determining whether the bot is "good" or "bad", yet I thought the issue was not the bot itself but where it was retrieving the pages to scan. Somehow I thought it would be a "prevention of redirection" type code. So first, I suppose my question is: Am I on the right track. And if so then I can dig into the code. But I'd certainly need to understand why it works. Thanks, Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btherl Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 I don't think that code example is what you want. This looks more like what is meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-confirmed_reverse_DNS It has to be done at the DNS configuration level, it's nothing to do with php (unfortunately). I'm not convinced it's related to the problem you're having with Google though. If I google "tickerfind.com" I find your site, not the duplicate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey87 Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 Hi, Thanks for your reply. One author, who claimed to have given speeches on the subject, sounded completely certain that the Forward Reverse DNS solution was the only one which would work. Unfortunately he never gave any code examples. That probably should have been the tip-off! I'm not writing it off, but I don't quite see how it would work. You're right that the php example I did find was really about something else. (Allowing certain bots in to view guarded material) Regarding your last point, the hack was relating to how google spiders the contents, which it assumes belong to the handj.net site. My site works fine. The problem is that google thinks my site is a duplicate of someone else's original content thus causing my SERP position to plunge. Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gizmola Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Hi, Thanks for your reply. One author, who claimed to have given speeches on the subject, sounded completely certain that the Forward Reverse DNS solution was the only one which would work. Unfortunately he never gave any code examples. That probably should have been the tip-off! I'm not writing it off, but I don't quite see how it would work. You're right that the php example I did find was really about something else. (Allowing certain bots in to view guarded material) Regarding your last point, the hack was relating to how google spiders the contents, which it assumes belong to the handj.net site. My site works fine. The problem is that google thinks my site is a duplicate of someone else's original content thus causing my SERP position to plunge. Jeff My advice is to make sure you have your site connected to the Google webmaster tools. Then you can send an email to Google directly pointing out the issue. They don't want sites exploiting their search engine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey87 Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 Hi, Most of what I've read says don't bother contacting google about this issue. Maybe I'll give it a try, though I won't get my hopes up;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey87 Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 Quick update, I just reported it to google through webmaster tools. Okay, this probably isn't a php issue. Kind of wish it was so I'd have a permanent fix. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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