Google Warns Against Using Sneaky Redirects

Google officials announced recent updates to the redirects and hacked content portions of their Webmaster Guidelines to deter the use of "Sneaky Redirects". Google's Search Quality Team member, Aaseesh Marina, defines sneaky redirects as:

"redirects [that] are designed to manipulate or deceive search engine or display different content to human users than to search engines."

These sorts of redirects have been used for a long time as spamming tactics, but in an increasingly mobile world these redirect tactics have also changed. Two examples that are now included in the updated guidelines as what not to do are:

• Desktop users might receive a normal page, while mobile users are directed to a completely different spam domain.
• Search engines are shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different.

Google updated its quality guidelines, and its hacked content guidelines to include updated forms of redirects. Google has also provided a resource for webmasters who believe that their site has been hacked in this way.