A few weeks ago, I reported about Google investigating a Polish hacker who is stealing webmasters Google traffic by hacking and tricking Google into thinking his domains are the original content. The interesting part was not that this is going on, I said it is an issue in the US and everywhere, but that Google is investigating it.
Since then, I have received numerous emails, tweets, etc telling me how big of an issue this is in the US. I know it is an issue but they really want me to cover it, so here are some more examples.
There are many threads on this issue, but here is one that is recent and lively in the Google Webmaster Help forums.
Top Contributor, Suzanne, said in the thread:
I've seen this behaviour before where a hacked third party site that shows content from a non-hacked site (yours, for example) will start displaying in Search. It's pretty rare but it does sometimes happen. As I said, I've alerted Google engineers to the problem.
She even added:
As I said, I've alerted the Google engineers. This isn't something new. My advice is always: contact the hacked sites and improve the quality of your own site. I hate to say it, but I see this happening with sites where the quality isn't the highest. :-(
Google is labeling many of the sites as hacked, but still showing them. The example given to me includes:
aumisme.org and polarhestar.is are hack/malware sites that Google has recently started to index and rank. They are marked as hacked b y Google but they are still ranking (see the SEM Rush graph screenshots below). The sites has increased in US keywords ranked from around 0 to 3,000 or more in just a few days.
Here are two other examples, but the list goes on and on:
wspkorczak.eu is a known hacked site ranking in Google as of last December and has ranked for 60 days or so. redhenrestaurant.com is a site that may have been hacked 5 days ago and it is not currently flagged that as hacked by Google.. But it is ranking in some search as #1 or #2 in google as per the attached query.
Again, this is nothing new but can be devastating for the original content owner.
Google has not replied to the thread.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
