I run a small decal store, Xtreme Digital GraphiX, and I’ve run into a weird huge spam / cloaking problem that’s affecting my brand on Google. I been in business for 15 years and i never had sales this low. keep in mind i been adding new blogs new products and improving old products on a weekly basis. I even overhauled my theme and updated it.
When I search my brand name + product titles, I see results on random domains I don’t own. This happens when i use vpn with united states location, if i m on canadian location i don’t see this. The Google result shows my exact product title and brand, but when I click it from Google, the page briefly shows my title and then automatically redirects to similar product page on sites like hmffusadotcom and few others sites that look like drop shipping sites from china.
If I copy and paste the same URL directly into the browser, I usually get a 404 page or totally different content. So the page acts one way when coming from Google, and another way when opened directly, which feels like hacked cloaking/redirect spam. keep in mind those pages are legit sites that i think were hacked pages, they were able to remove the content on there pages but it still shows on google search and google bots are not detecting this issue there just being redirected .
My concerns:
My brand and product names are being abused on these sites.
These results show up instead of (or along with) my legit product pages.
I’m worried this could hurt my SEO and trust for my real Shopify store.
This is happening on a large scale, every time i look i see more , so far over 50 sites and counting.
Has anyone seen this before with their store?
Could this kind of cloaking hurt my site’s rankings?
I think this could be happening to a lot of online stores and very few are aware?
Is there anything I should do on my side (besides reporting URLs to Google as spam/hacked)?
I did install a bot blocking app few days ago, it also supposed to stop my content from getting copied by bots.
Any tips on how to deal with this new sophisticated spam cloaking hack?
I can share example queries, URLs, and screenshots if that helps.
Thanks for any advice from other merchants or SEO experts here.
The answer is yes to all your questions.
There is a bunch of similar complaints here on forum you can search more.
I doubt bot blocking would really help as there is always a way to get information from your site.
Your only option is to reach out to hosters/registrars and complain about fraudulent activity they host. DMCA notices (btw – good keyword to search for).
Unfortunately, not a quick fix one would hope for.
if you click on it you go to this online store, this online store doesnt mention my brand or have the same product , but selling a another product for dirt cheap.
This is happening on a very large scale all over google search , sometimes when i click the link, i go to a site that shows me brand and my product name on a weird looking page like this
i m not sure what this page is but its like a cloak cover for the real page this is linking too, if i hit the reload on this web page showing this lion on the bmw it reloads on another online store you see below.
I think this is happening to a lot of sellers on a very large scale and google indexing bots are getting tricked, i tried to have those google results removed from google search using outdated content tool, but google keeps coming back and saying its not outdated, i think when google bots looks it sees the hood lion page with my product title and brand on there so google bot thinks the page is not outdated and my request to remove is denied.
i posted this issue on google help forums but no replies yet.
If you suspect this is happening to you? google your brand ( at usa location) use vpn if your in canada.
I checked the us patent office and I can’t find your name or logo. I’d definitely start the process of copyright and trademark registration. And start filing complaints. Maybe also contact those host sites (like CPA Clinics) that are re-directing and telling them their site is being used for these scams.
I wish i had the money to throw on lawyers to chase this , its really pissing me off. But the reality is that those sites using the big brand logos are a cloaked phantom they vanish and redirect to the suspected drop shipping sites and those i suspect are behind this. But there not doing any copyrighting on there site, they can simply claim there victims of this too.
As far as i m concerned this is a google issue as there allowing it to happen.
What i like to know is how bad is the damage, is it to the extent where i would have to re brand ?
How many others are experiencing this is it just me? also why me?
My hope is if this is happening to a lot of small business maybe we can group together and do something about it?
I’m not sure how big it is. I know they estimate that 40% of all intenet traffic is malicious bot code. I have seen complaints like this and it seems like WordPress sites are particularly vulnerable to this Search result redirect scam. Interestingly, that cpa site is on WordPress…
Rebranding sounds kinda fun actually. Especially if you guys think it could use the revamp. No better time actually cause there are lots of brand creation apps, especially with a.i.
, they should have lawyers ready …