Apparently, there are hackers going around adding canonical tags to other people’s web pages. The canonical tags point to the hacker’s spammy site, of course, because it’s a way for that site to get rankings.
Image via Wikipedia
The canonical tag looks like this: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.originalpage.com/“ >This tells search engines to list originalpage.com in the SERPs and allows webmasters to use duplicate content on their websites, without penalty.
For example, years ago, we had a MemberGate site for ADD. I added articles to the blog every day, and wanting some cool content on the member’s portal, the manager (totally innocently) added a blog article to the front page. We went from #3 in the SERPs to #600 the next day. It was unbelievable!
But with the advent of canonical tagging, that would have been OK, providing that the dupe page had the canonical link blurb.
So, hackers are getting into people’s servers, and adding canonical tags to all their pages to get the link juice. Hacker jerks.
If you think you’re above hacking, think again. It can happen to anyone, any business (just look what happened to PlayStation Network last month, people). So, it could happen to you if you’re not paying attention.
The only way to find out if you’re in trouble is… by opening each page of your site and looking for that rel=canonical tag. If you find one and you didn’t put it there… Get rid of it. Change your server password, and move on.
You’ll probably only have to check a few pages. Start with your highest page rank pages because hackers probably won’t bother with any that don’t send link juice. If you find one page, keep checking until you’re sure you have them all fixed.
Sucks, I know. But it’s better than losing a blog you’ve been writing in for two years, like I did. Grr…
