Here's another dodgy one - harming me?

Utter Bollocks — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 07:36:00 -0600

Here is another very large directory, Ubbi, that comes up when you "allinurl" query Google.

I take as an example a random site and query their allinurl. This is for TravelForKids.Com

One of the entries for their site comes up as Ubbi , but a different page in the Google cache for Ubbi

The difference in the given urls for the direct link and the cache amount to a space in the cached link between the "www" and "travelforkids.com" on Ubbis site. If you remove the space, then obviously you end up back at the original Ubbi page

I cannot get anything out of the headers to give me a clue as to what is happening, and the Google removal tool will not accept a URL with a space (I do not seem to get anywhere by inserting html code for a space instead of the space)

There must clearly be a cloaked redirect for Googlebot, but I cannot tease out what it is. The site serves up one page for the cache, another for the direct link.

I don't think there is a 302 here, the links nowhere take one to the "target" site directly. However, I suspect that there is a harming of the ranking of any site caught up in the scam.

So basic question "is this just a little mild cloaking or are they harming my ranking?"

So I tried Claus tests suggested in an earlier blog
Query the site name
site:www.travelforkids.com

These both show these is no gain for the directory in "controlling" my position in the rankings. So again a little "harmless" cloaking that is making them money from advertisers, but appears not to be actually harming my own sites.