Google Hijacking
Sometimes people can hijack the search results of other webmasters. This is rather uncommon in most fields, but if you get into high-margin areas, such as prescription drugs, it is much more common.
In May of 2005, Google actually had one of their sites hijacked. Notice below how the Google AdSense site is showing up as being part of the all-in-one-business.com domain.
After that happened Google changed their facts & fiction page to include the following:
There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design.
While the hijackings are uncommon, if you are going to play in hyper-competitive fields, make sure you make friends with some people who can help you out of sticky situations. People usually do hijacks via 302 redirects, meta redirects, or a combination of the two. An unwritten law amongst many of the most aggressive SEOs is that you should never hijack a listing, and you should never file a spam report. If you do, most likely you will not like some of the retaliation actions that other webmasters may do.
Originally posted 2008-06-09 08:44:20.
