{"id":29927,"date":"2024-11-12T12:40:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T12:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/en\/blog\/wiki\/url-hijacking\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T09:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T09:23:20","slug":"URL_Hijacking","status":"publish","type":"wiki","link":"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/en\/wiki\/URL_Hijacking","title":{"rendered":"URL Hijacking"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is URL hijacking?<\/span><\/h2>\n

In SEO, URL hijacking usually refers to competitors replacing your website\u2019s search position with theirs, essentially removing your page from the SERPs<\/a> and taking your page\u2019s traffic. URL hijacking is a black hat SEO<\/a> technique and is not a part of a normal white hat SEO strategy.\n<\/p>\n

The term URL hijacking is used to describe different yet similar phenomenon in other disciplines, like web development and SEM<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

How does URL hijacking work<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n
\"URL-Hijacking\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Figure:<\/b> URL-Hijacking – Author: Seobility – License: CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Url hijacking, and black hat SEO in general, used to be a far bigger problem than it is today. With search engines cracking down on spam and SEO tactics that try to manipulate the algorithm, it has become more challenging to get ahead using black hat techniques. Nevertheless, in the early days of SEO, URL hijacking was a problem.\n<\/p>\n

Url hijacking uses 302 redirects<\/a> to point from a spam page to another page ranking in the SERPs. 302\u2019s are used to indicate that content has moved temporarily. When a search engine crawls a page with a 302 redirect to another page, it sees the page that is using a 302 redirect as the original. When a spam site uses a 302 to redirect to another site\u2019s page, crawlers may view the spam page as the original. This can confuse search engines and force them to choose between the two, often leading to original pages being removed in favor of the spam page.\n<\/p>\n

URL hijacking today<\/span><\/h2>\n

Today, URL hijacking is still something you come across when learning about SEO. Although not used as often as in the past, there are still rare instances where URL hijacking can occur. This is usually the result of a hacked site, but on occasion, it can be done without access to your site. This can happen when sites forget to use a canonical tag<\/a>, which is a tag that is used to indicate that a page is the original version, and is used to prevent duplicate content<\/a> issues. Nowadays, URL hijacking is far less common than it was back in the early days of the web.\n<\/p>\n

How to prevent it<\/span><\/h2>\n

URL hijacking isn\u2019t something you have a lot of control over, although there are a few things you can do to lower the chances of it happening to your site. It is rare nowadays, but it can still happen, either on purpose or by accident. Since it is caused by search engines having to choose which page is the original, ensuring they know your pages are the original is an important part of preventing it. A few important things often mentioned by SEO\u2019s to prevent URL hijacking are:\n<\/p>\n