ebookers PageJack themselves in Google SERP
Monday, 07 August 2006
Search for 'ebookers' on Google, and you'll see something has gone really awry with Googles interpretation of which is the primary domain.
It looks a like a traditional PageJack caused by a fault with their website and multiple domains. Chris at e-consultancy covers it in more detail plus I added some additional comments: http://tinyurl.com/klhmd
Googles Big Daddy update should have prevented this happening, but perhaps it has opened up a flaw of its own?
- Multiple domains
- One domain maps to duplicate content in a sub directory of the primary domain
- Original version in sub directory is unavailable
- At least one high PR page on the originating site features links to both versions of the duplicate pages thus authenticating them
- Domains are all owned by the same company in similar IP ranges
In the SERP it showed all the symptoms of a classic 302 PageJack with conflicting link and cache content, although when I last looked just now, the cached version had updated the to show the appropriate content for that URL although probably not what you'd be expecting for your search.
Couldn't find your e-mail address, so here's the URL for the AOL data: http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/
Posted by: Danny Sanchez | Tuesday, 08 August 2006 at 04:56 AM
Danny you star. Thanks.
Posted by: Teddie | Tuesday, 08 August 2006 at 10:18 AM
Update 9th August - Just spotted they also have a homepage 302 redirect on ebookers.com just to make things worse.
Posted by: Teddie | Wednesday, 09 August 2006 at 09:50 AM
Firstly, great site. Secondly, having tons of websites on the same IP range is asking for trouble, and for a large organisation like ebookers, doing this is suicidal and shows that they don't have the right marketing people in there.
Don't these guys know aswell that you can remove the DMOZ title in your Google listing?
When you visit the .com site, the title tags look strange, why would you want to use semi colons between each word?
I know they have a massive marketing budget, but blowing their ranking in Google for stupid basic SEO mistakes, is asking for trouble.
All they can do now is clean up the domains so that they are on different IP ranges, and then complete a reinclusion request - how long it will take to recover from this error is anyone's guess.
I'm surprised someones head hasn't rolled for this error.
Posted by: Darren Cronian | Saturday, 12 August 2006 at 11:34 AM
I can hear it hitting the basket. Supposedly this has been an ongoing problem for them, I guess they'll be a bit more thorough now though.
Posted by: teddie | Monday, 21 August 2006 at 03:59 PM