Can someone explain this to me?

[Morticia]

I regularly get Google alerts for my place that show up attached to these websites that have nothing to do with anything. Here's my question- have the websites that this shows up on been hacked or is this a case of someone selling their website and random stuff being stuffed on it? And why the stuff that's on there? It makes no sense at all. This website would never show up in a search for my place. It's generally 1-2 of these sites everyday.
This is an example. And it always looks like this. Bold font at the top of the page and then all this cut and paste stuff. Now some days the links go nowhere. And sometimes the 'original' site is 'dead' as in it's a single page consisting of a company name and phone number.

 

[Mountain Inn]

Morticia, so glad you asked this one. I don't have an answer, but do experience the same thing. I have been cautiously opening the google alerts ever since having 2 guests a few months back that really made me think. Have you ever wondered what might happen if someone links to your website and their BRAND is so totally different than your own. The stunningly beautiful young guest arrived (last minute drop in) with a man old enough to be her father. Both were quiet guests, easy to serve. He said she was an attorney - I heard this again at breakfast while they dined with other guests. Attire was very UN-attorney-ish. Six inch stilletto heels with sparkles - which we quickly and very politely asked her not to wear inside because she was leaving little trails of dotted indentions each time she walked - our heart pine floors are at least 105 years old. She replied she had no other shoes at all except more heels like these, so I offered her the little booties like our plumber uses when he is here - he gave us a bunch of them once when we had several dusty work projects going on at once. She eyed the booties with dismay - and pointed out they would not go with her outfit and she declined demurly (sp?). So, until she and her escort went out to dinner and purchased little silver slippers at Walmart or somewhere, she went barefoot. At turndown when they were at dinner, I gawked. The room itself was perfectly neat and clean...nothing had been disturbed or tossed about. BUT, hanging on every possible corner, door, cheval mirror, shelf, bed post, whatever, were the most feathery, sparkly, bauble encrusted, skimpy (thong sized!) garments I have ever seen all in one spot in my long life! I could not even place the daytime comforter in its usual top shelf closet spot so I took it out of the room. I didn't touch anything, just gawked. My imagination did the rest! After the couple left, I googled the girl...she is a soft porn star. Well known. Again, let me say they left the room in perfect order, no mess, no spots, no food all about, just perfect. Was our room used for a photo shot? Perhaps, because while they did not hang up a single garment, there were large black suit cases stacked from the floor of the closet up to the closet rod. If a shot of this young woman taken here in our lovely room appears on line anywhere, we can only hope our place is not mentioned. I now think differently about google alerts!

 

[Morticia]

Morticia, so glad you asked this one. I don't have an answer, but do experience the same thing. I have been cautiously opening the google alerts ever since having 2 guests a few months back that really made me think. Have you ever wondered what might happen if someone links to your website and their BRAND is so totally different than your own. The stunningly beautiful young guest arrived (last minute drop in) with a man old enough to be her father. Both were quiet guests, easy to serve. He said she was an attorney - I heard this again at breakfast while they dined with other guests. Attire was very UN-attorney-ish. Six inch stilletto heels with sparkles - which we quickly and very politely asked her not to wear inside because she was leaving little trails of dotted indentions each time she walked - our heart pine floors are at least 105 years old. She replied she had no other shoes at all except more heels like these, so I offered her the little booties like our plumber uses when he is here - he gave us a bunch of them once when we had several dusty work projects going on at once. She eyed the booties with dismay - and pointed out they would not go with her outfit and she declined demurly (sp?). So, until she and her escort went out to dinner and purchased little silver slippers at Walmart or somewhere, she went barefoot. At turndown when they were at dinner, I gawked. The room itself was perfectly neat and clean...nothing had been disturbed or tossed about. BUT, hanging on every possible corner, door, cheval mirror, shelf, bed post, whatever, were the most feathery, sparkly, bauble encrusted, skimpy (thong sized!) garments I have ever seen all in one spot in my long life! I could not even place the daytime comforter in its usual top shelf closet spot so I took it out of the room. I didn't touch anything, just gawked. My imagination did the rest! After the couple left, I googled the girl...she is a soft porn star. Well known. Again, let me say they left the room in perfect order, no mess, no spots, no food all about, just perfect. Was our room used for a photo shot? Perhaps, because while they did not hang up a single garment, there were large black suit cases stacked from the floor of the closet up to the closet rod. If a shot of this young woman taken here in our lovely room appears on line anywhere, we can only hope our place is not mentioned. I now think differently about google alerts!.

Hey, you could have a whole other sideline there! (Kidding.)
What Swirt says is that links coming into your site are not as damaging (in Google's eyes) as links coming off your site. NOW, OTOH, if you start getting a lot of calls for this sort of thing, you might want to figure out (with a tracking program) where your website might be showing up!
The sort of thing I'm seeing never has any links. They rarely even have the website name, just a few randomly chosen words, almost always a 'theme' that my inn name happens to fit in.
Like, there will be a whole page of things like: blueberry scones, blue birds, blue moon, babymoon, moonshine, shine on harvest moon, harvest gold appliances, appliance paint, white paint for appliances, etc.
Nothing that makes any sense, it's just words that feed off each other. This one happened to pick a location and it went with that. But it makes no sense. (Sometimes, tho, there are some really weird blogs! There's a blog out there for any topic, let me tell you!)
Thanks for the interesting story!

 

[Suzie Q]

Yeah, on my google alerts, I tend to see the same thing.
On hits, does anyone know what "no pid" stands for? I don't remember if it is on the IP side of the page, or the URL side of the page. Thanks

 

[Mountain Inn]

PID...page identification? I don't know.
Another sideline...hehehe...a new additional revenue stream would be great, but at what cost, huh? I thought of submitting the story when Jay called for unusual guest stories, but decided I didn't want our name connected to it! Besides, we have a couple of other stories that are more outlandish! Not X-rated, but outlandish!
Our google alerts will sometimes include just one word of our name...but one day, both main words appeared. A woman in some other state, with OUR name, which isn't sposed to be a people name, passed away and google alerted us to her obit.
Often the alerts are useless...but I always look at them, just in case.

 

[JBloggs]

You can't control the wind.

 

[swirt]

They are simply scraper sites that have spiders that simply "scrape" content off the rest of the web and automatically assemble pages, which are then used to generate some kind of temporary value for the page. It is fleeting at best. Google i am sure assigns no value to them but it does surprise me that they even bother to acknowledge them with an alert. .... especially when within a few hours of the alert, the page will have been removed from Google's index.

 

[swirt]

Yeah, on my google alerts, I tend to see the same thing.
On hits, does anyone know what "no pid" stands for? I don't remember if it is on the IP side of the page, or the URL side of the page. Thanks.

On hits, does anyone know what "no pid" stands for? I don't remember if it is on the IP side of the page, or the URL side of the page. Thanks

"No PID" is usually a server notification of "No Processor ID" But that would not be something that would show up in a report from a tracker. What tracker are you using that is showing this?

 

[swirt]

in the example you give, that Dentist's site was either purchased then run up with this kind of crap, or more likely his site or server has been taken over without his knowledge.

 

[Morticia]

PID...page identification? I don't know.
Another sideline...hehehe...a new additional revenue stream would be great, but at what cost, huh? I thought of submitting the story when Jay called for unusual guest stories, but decided I didn't want our name connected to it! Besides, we have a couple of other stories that are more outlandish! Not X-rated, but outlandish!
Our google alerts will sometimes include just one word of our name...but one day, both main words appeared. A woman in some other state, with OUR name, which isn't sposed to be a people name, passed away and google alerted us to her obit.
Often the alerts are useless...but I always look at them, just in case..

You can 'fix' your alert so it only shows your place, or anything with exactly the same name. Use " " around the alert term. If I didn't do that, I'd be getting all kinds of oddball stuff!

 

[Morticia]

They are simply scraper sites that have spiders that simply "scrape" content off the rest of the web and automatically assemble pages, which are then used to generate some kind of temporary value for the page. It is fleeting at best. Google i am sure assigns no value to them but it does surprise me that they even bother to acknowledge them with an alert. .... especially when within a few hours of the alert, the page will have been removed from Google's index..

The removal often happens very quickly. I mean the removal of the page. By the time I see the alert and click the link (I don't click all of them) the page may already be returning an error.
How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?

 

[swirt]

They are simply scraper sites that have spiders that simply "scrape" content off the rest of the web and automatically assemble pages, which are then used to generate some kind of temporary value for the page. It is fleeting at best. Google i am sure assigns no value to them but it does surprise me that they even bother to acknowledge them with an alert. .... especially when within a few hours of the alert, the page will have been removed from Google's index..

The removal often happens very quickly. I mean the removal of the page. By the time I see the alert and click the link (I don't click all of them) the page may already be returning an error.
How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
.

How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
That is a great question! There are three possible answers ...none of them perfect in execution:

1. Browse your server space by FTP and look for the addition of any new folders that don't belong there.
2. Register your site with Google webmaster tools. If Google discovers that your site has been hijacked, or corrupted, they send a notice to your webmaster tools account (which you can now have forwarded to your email in case you don't login to webmaster tools regularly)
3. Do a "site:yourdomain.com" search in google and keep an eye on how many pages you have that are indexed. If you see that number jump from 20 up to 500 it would be an indication that something is amiss.

The drawback to number 1 or 3 is that these are not things that most people will do on a regular basis.

 

[Morticia]

They are simply scraper sites that have spiders that simply "scrape" content off the rest of the web and automatically assemble pages, which are then used to generate some kind of temporary value for the page. It is fleeting at best. Google i am sure assigns no value to them but it does surprise me that they even bother to acknowledge them with an alert. .... especially when within a few hours of the alert, the page will have been removed from Google's index..

The removal often happens very quickly. I mean the removal of the page. By the time I see the alert and click the link (I don't click all of them) the page may already be returning an error.
How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
.

How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
That is a great question! There are three possible answers ...none of them perfect in execution:

1. Browse your server space by FTP and look for the addition of any new folders that don't belong there.
2. Register your site with Google webmaster tools. If Google discovers that your site has been hijacked, or corrupted, they send a notice to your webmaster tools account (which you can now have forwarded to your email in case you don't login to webmaster tools regularly)
3. Do a "site:yourdomain.com" search in google and keep an eye on how many pages you have that are indexed. If you see that number jump from 20 up to 500 it would be an indication that something is amiss.

The drawback to number 1 or 3 is that these are not things that most people will do on a regular basis.
.

I just did #3 last week and was amazed at the number of pages! Not excessively high, just didn't realize I had that many pages. However, now Im wondering.
Of course, once I have my blog directed to my website, that number could be huge. If I ever get it to work that is.
Webmaster is on the list of other things to do.

 

[swirt]

They are simply scraper sites that have spiders that simply "scrape" content off the rest of the web and automatically assemble pages, which are then used to generate some kind of temporary value for the page. It is fleeting at best. Google i am sure assigns no value to them but it does surprise me that they even bother to acknowledge them with an alert. .... especially when within a few hours of the alert, the page will have been removed from Google's index..

The removal often happens very quickly. I mean the removal of the page. By the time I see the alert and click the link (I don't click all of them) the page may already be returning an error.
How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
.

How would any of us know if this was happening to our own sites? Other than if we were running alerts?
That is a great question! There are three possible answers ...none of them perfect in execution:

1. Browse your server space by FTP and look for the addition of any new folders that don't belong there.
2. Register your site with Google webmaster tools. If Google discovers that your site has been hijacked, or corrupted, they send a notice to your webmaster tools account (which you can now have forwarded to your email in case you don't login to webmaster tools regularly)
3. Do a "site:yourdomain.com" search in google and keep an eye on how many pages you have that are indexed. If you see that number jump from 20 up to 500 it would be an indication that something is amiss.

The drawback to number 1 or 3 is that these are not things that most people will do on a regular basis.
.

I just did #3 last week and was amazed at the number of pages! Not excessively high, just didn't realize I had that many pages. However, now Im wondering.
Of course, once I have my blog directed to my website, that number could be huge. If I ever get it to work that is.
Webmaster is on the list of other things to do.
.

Of course, once I have my blog directed to my website, that number could be huge. If I ever get it to work that is.
Since you are going to be redirecting your blog as a subdomain, you can separate these out if you wanted to.
example

• site:www.mydomain.com - will return just the pages from your main site
• site:myblog.mydomain.com - will return just the pages from your blog
• site:mydomain.com - will return all pages from your entire domain. (should be the sum of the blog and main site)

 

[Morticia]

OK, this is a cut and paste from the Google alert I got today. If it wasn't annoying, it would be hysterical:
On the south coast of maine, bed and breakfast, me current vaccinations are allowed in the cottage room (must call in advance, no ...
So, if your vaccinations aren't current, please book a different room!

 

[JBloggs]

Nothing you can do about it Mortie. It is the internet. You will continue to get sucked into stuff as long as your information is public. "IT" happens.

and my siggie line is perfect for this one!!