Redirected links - are they ok or dodgy?

[chandrika]

If a website links to my website using a redirect type link such as


www.website.net/goto.php4?url=http://www.mysite.com=Log&add=

Is that dodgy at all, I am thinking it is probably just a link that is counting stats for the link, but is it dodgy and can a SE follow it, or do they attribute the mysite.com content to the redirecting site?

I guess I am asking can such types of links do my website any harm?

[incrediblehelp]

Its not dodgy at all and it probably wont count, but you dont know for sure until it is tested.

[chandrika]

OK, thanks very much, I checked some other links on the same page to see whether their links there had been noted by the SE, but they did not appear to be recognised in any SE when linked that way. That isnt all important though, as long as its not dodgy, that was my main concern.

[thindenim]

Check the page headers to see what type of redirect the page is doing. If it's a 301 redirect then the link will pass 'link juice'.

You can check page headers here Check Server Headers Tool - HTTP Status Codes Checker (http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp)

[chandrika]

Thanks, that is interesting. I was concerned because I had read an article about website hijacking, where it said that by using some kind of redirect another website could hijack your site. I did not completely understand about it, so was a little wary when I saw these links using redirects. In this case though, after reading here, I think it was just some linking script that the site had in place.

A while back I had faced several other domains showing one of my websites in full and getting my traffic and I never got to the bottom of how or why that happened, so was on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

[NetProwler]

The kind of referral link you gave uses a redirection script which will put out a 302 (temporary redirection). The SE will follow it all right. As incrediblehelp says it is better to keep an eye.

[chandrika]

Actually, last night I found another thing that made me look twice.

I did a search in Google
php? www.findallsorts.com - Google Search (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=php%3F+www.findallsorts.com&hl=en&start=0&sa=N)

And there are 4 sites
cewad DOT info
twentysixshoe DOT info
materialfecesill DOT info
grenlandtangoklubb DOTnet/

That have my pages listed as theres, the actual pages do not exist even, there is just some scipt going on redirecting and hijacking my affilate links.

An example of one of the pages is
computer-and-mobile-p9 DOT grenlandtangoklubb DOT net/19-soyo-go-video-gvlm1928-dual-vgadvi-lcd-monitor-black/

In the search I did Google helpfully displayed that they were using my site someway. I think this might be an example of the 302 hijack that I had read about. I tried to check the page source but its forbidden, all site owners privacyprotected etc.

It seems they somehow make my page content look like their own and then alter my affilaite links to include their ID, I have contacted the affiliate company in question with their ids which were just visible during the brief redirect, hoping they might be able to do something.