What is this guy trying to achieve?

[kakizito]

So, couple days ago I made a thread about someone iframing my site. I had never seen anything like this where my page was fully embebed in their site like it seemed you were acctually in my site but within their url. Found out after an whois to domain that their are 3 domains within that server and all were iframing my site.

Strange thing is,If you go to the front page in the normal way of any those 3 domains, you get what looks like a legitimate 500 page (cut-and-paste, so it's all the same size):

Oops! An Error Occurred
The server returned a "500 Internal Server Error".
Something is broken. Please e-mail us at [/B] and let us know what you were doing when this error occurred. We will fix it as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.[FONT=verdana][SIZE=2][COLOR=#000000]

[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][B]That [email] is not obfuscation on my part; it's the literal text of the page.[/B]

And all the 3 sites had same inner page iframing my site like:

site1.com/sshha/
site2.com/sshha/
site3.com/sshha/

Only iframe from site 1 was sending me the traffic though. Traffic was very targeted and same language my site, made sales and got facebook likes and visitors navigate my site just within the normal times and Ctrs like any user from organic traffic.

I managed to break out of his frame with a JS frame buster because was afraid this could hurt my site and when now I go to site1.com/sshha/ and other two sites they have a new iframed site.

[B]My questions to any of you who can help me solve this out is: [/B]

Is there any particular reason why someone would do this? Was it to kill my rankings? Was it a mistake? I mean nobody sends 3k visitors/day to other with good intentions.

And is there any way to know where the traffic was coming from?

Thank you.

 

[WorldKaoss]

Could it be some weird Apache DDoS attempt?

Instead of attacking your server directly, they iframe your site (thus your apache server) and send the attack to their domain (so the attack usually ends up in your apache daemon).

I see this as the most plausible explanation. Maybe this is why he changed the iframe source now that you found out & used the JS breaker. He DDoSes someone else's server. Probably he's paid by someone to do it..

Or, of course, he wants to damage your ranking.. though I don't know how 3k visitors/day would damage it.

 

[kakizito]

I do not know how DDoS attacks works or anything related to that, how can I know if he made something bad to my site? Also traffic fluctuated just like the organic traffic, more visits between 16:00 to 21:00 and started to decrease as the night comes in.

That ocurred for 5 days: first day 3112 visits / second day 3098 / third day 2560 / fourth day 2802 / fifth day 2997 visits - Also I could see it was real visits because when I made the iframe to load an offer page made 3 or 4 sales.

Any way to know what is the traffic source?

Thank you.

 

[TheMasterOfMoney]

 

[Numbuh362]

 

[haveigotyounow]

I dont think its something you should be concerned about as your site isnt affected in a negative way. But it may still be worth checking with your hosts to see what they suggest, perhaps if they have similar issues with other clients.

 

[kakizito]

No message till now. In the first thread I made here people advised me to block the traffic, so I did it with frame buster, perhaps I shouldn't had done it an enjoy the traffic.

Any way to find the guy or to know where the traffic is coming from?

Thank you.

 

[nameuser]

So strange.

I know it might sound like a conspiracy theory, buy if a competitor use unorthodox method to send traffic to his website, is google might think it is the website owner that try those non ethical methods and do harm to his site?
Cause it might be a good method as a business owner won't rush to end the traffic.

What do you think?

 

[TropicalSun]

It could be negative SEO but to be honest I'm not sure why they'd be using an iframe like that rather than directly copying and pasting your site on their servers.

Google wouldn't consider the iframe as duplicate content, right?

 

[tony_d]

 

[kakizito]

I think google wouldn't consider it as dup content because, well, infact it's my site in an iframe and in this case the "ofending" sites were registered 1 day before they sent me the traffic and they aren't even indexed and homepage has a very strange "500 internal server error".

Don't know if it was to affect my rankings to because the new site they are iframing now it's in the same niche of mine but is a 1 year old site with 300 fb likes and I would assume not good rankings!

 

[tony_d]

I think google wouldn't consider it as dup content because, well, infact it's my site in an iframe and in this case the "ofending" sites were registered 1 day before they sent me the traffic and they aren't even indexed and homepage has a very strange "500 internal server error".

Don't know if it was to affect my rankings to because the new site they are iframing now it's in the same niche of mine but is a 1 year old site with 300 fb likes and I would assume not good rankings!

This traffic made purchases, you said? It's actually valuable traffic?

 

[kakizito]

Yes it did. I loaded a web 2.0 with my frame buster and wrote a very simple landing page with only text (700 words) and made some sales. Traffic was coming in just like search traffic, more volume like peak between 16:00 to 21:00 and then slowing down.

 

[nameuser]

How did you find out you were iframed?
How is your ranking?

 

[kakizito]

Well my traffic almost remains the same every week and I noticed a very sudden increase last week, I went to GA and saw site1.com referring like 3k visitors that day and tryed to reach site1.com and gave me a strange "500 internal server error" which was very confusing to me. After walking in circles went to GA again and could see after exploring a bit the inner page of site1.com that was acctually referring my page. Went to that page, and was showing what seemed to be exactly my site, thought it was a copy of it, but I could acctualy navigate like was my site but url stayed the same of site1.com, right click to view source and it had his code with and iframe of my page inside.

To be honest my traffic increased this week, but it could be the new algo update, have to see it in a few days if stays this way.

 

[tony_d]

Well, there's not much to do.

Unless it's a money site you've invested LOTS of cash into, just take the traffic and see what happens next

 

[mainceaft]

that's happened to me before when some one hack server and send all visitors to his site lol ..
look that site was hacked too

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

He might just be running tests and decided it was safer to run them on your site rather than his.

"Oops! An Error Occurred
The server returned a "500 Internal Server Error".
Something is broken. Please e-mail us at [/B] and let us know what you were doing when this error occurred. We will fix it as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.[/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]
[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE][COLOR=#00ff00][FONT=verdana][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][FONT=arial]
That error message is given when developing with http://symfony.com/
It might be worthwhile to try to reach out to the guy or just block the traffic.[/FONT][/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]

 

[kakizito]

It's a brand new site mates not even indexed and with no history. Bhought last week one day before he started sending me traffic. So I think it's not a hacked site or testing. Find this very strange. How can I reach him? All I see in his site is that inner page were he iframed my site and now is iframing other site, no contact options available.

He doesn't send me traffic anymore, now the new iframed site is receiving it as I see facebook likes growing, if I reach the guy now would be to try to understand why he did this or to try to figure it out where the traffic comes from.

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

It's a brand new site mates not even indexed and with no history. Bhought last week one day before he started sending me traffic. So I think it's not a hacked site or testing. Find this very strange. How can I reach him? All I see in his site is that inner page were he iframed my site and now is iframing other site, no contact options available.

He doesn't send me traffic anymore, now the new iframed site is receiving it as I see facebook likes growing, if I reach the guy now would be to try to understand why he did this or to try to figure it out where the traffic comes from.

Have you checked WHOIS?
http://whois.domaintools.com/
http://www.nominet.org.uk/uk-domain-names/about-domain-names/domain-lookup-whois/whois-tool