secondeye
Elite Member
- Aug 1, 2008
- 1,998
- 584
Currently, to gain top ranking SEO hackers have found a new way to get high rankings on Google. The new trick involves hacked websites and the canonical tag.
Now, what is canonical tag?
Canonical tag "rel=canonical" tag is to help website owners eliminate self-created duplicate content. The canonical tag tells search engine spiders the original source of a file.
For example, a search engine robot might visit the web page "http://www.example.com/page4.htm". If that page contains the tag <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.originalpage.com/"> then search engines will show http://originalpage.com/ in the search results instead of http://example.com/.
The main point:
If hackers add the canonical tag to your web pages and point it to another website then your website content will help another website to get high rankings while your own website will lose all of its rankings.
How to check if your website is exploited
Open a page of your website in your browser and select "View HTML source" in your browser. If you can see a rel=canonical tag that points to an unknown domain in the head section of your page then your website has been hacked.
Unfortunately, hackers might have changed your web server so that it only shows the canonical tag to Google's indexing robot. In that case, you have to check how Google sees your web pages
Google is aware of the problem. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find out if a webmaster intentionally inserted a canonical tag to a website or if the tag was inserted by a hacker.
Solution:
Re-check all your main or homepage and if you found any of the tag mentioned above then remove it.
Matt Cutts and rel=canonical
"We take rel=canonical urls as a strong hint, but in some cases we won't use them:
Should Google trust rel=canonical if we see it in the body of the HTML? The answer is no, because some websites let people edit content or HTML on pages of the site."
You can read full detail about Matt Cutts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=email
I hope this will help many of our webmasters.
Regards,
Secondeye
###
Now, what is canonical tag?
Canonical tag "rel=canonical" tag is to help website owners eliminate self-created duplicate content. The canonical tag tells search engine spiders the original source of a file.
For example, a search engine robot might visit the web page "http://www.example.com/page4.htm". If that page contains the tag <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.originalpage.com/"> then search engines will show http://originalpage.com/ in the search results instead of http://example.com/.
The main point:
If hackers add the canonical tag to your web pages and point it to another website then your website content will help another website to get high rankings while your own website will lose all of its rankings.
How to check if your website is exploited
Open a page of your website in your browser and select "View HTML source" in your browser. If you can see a rel=canonical tag that points to an unknown domain in the head section of your page then your website has been hacked.
Unfortunately, hackers might have changed your web server so that it only shows the canonical tag to Google's indexing robot. In that case, you have to check how Google sees your web pages
Google is aware of the problem. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find out if a webmaster intentionally inserted a canonical tag to a website or if the tag was inserted by a hacker.
Solution:
Re-check all your main or homepage and if you found any of the tag mentioned above then remove it.
Matt Cutts and rel=canonical
"We take rel=canonical urls as a strong hint, but in some cases we won't use them:
- For example, if we think you're shooting yourself in the foot by accident (pointing a rel=canonical toward a non-existent/404 page), we'd reserve the right not to use the destination url you specify with rel=canonical.
- Another example where we might not go with your rel=canonical preference: if we think your website has been hacked and the hacker added a malicious rel=canonical.
Should Google trust rel=canonical if we see it in the body of the HTML? The answer is no, because some websites let people edit content or HTML on pages of the site."
You can read full detail about Matt Cutts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=email
I hope this will help many of our webmasters.
Regards,
Secondeye
###
