Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums
Guest
Welcome Guest.
You haven't logged in yet. If you don't have an account you can register now.


gibben

46 posts

Geek


#237827 19-Jun-2018 19:17
Send private message

I have a friend who has signed up to Yellow for Google Adwords. I look after his site for him and Yellow emailed me requesting that I insert the code snippets in to his pages so they can run Google Tag Manager ..... but that's another story.

 

Anyway, on checking his existing Analytics I saw an entry under hostnames for <<his domain>>.y9.co.nz which I see is registered to Yellow. When I go to the URL it redirects back to his site.

 

Any ideas why they would be doing this?


Create new topic
outdoorsnz
674 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #2040727 19-Jun-2018 19:43
Send private message

Possibly that url links to a script to run custom analytics code?



chewster
127 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

  #2040748 19-Jun-2018 20:32
Send private message

Searching the webs I found this example: 
http://www.tsh.co.nz vs. http://www.tsh.y9.co.nz

 

Wouldn't call that a standard redirect (as in 301/302) but more a "URL Frame" or "cloak" or "masked" redirect.

 

Interestingly the phone numbers differ in those two examples I found, so I'm wondering if they do this for some kind of call tracking analytics reason.

 

Generally not a good idea to have multiple versions of your website on multiple URL's floating out there (indexable). Tends makes it tricky for Google to decide which is the important one for SEO juice.





If my post helped you, consider my referrals (: Sharesies $5 referral code, Skinny 4GB buddy code, Contact Energy $100 promo code


gibben

46 posts

Geek


  #2040752 19-Jun-2018 20:39
Send private message

chewster:

 

Searching the webs I found this example: 
http://www.tsh.co.nz vs. http://www.tsh.y9.co.nz

 

Wouldn't call that a standard redirect (as in 301/302) but more a "URL Frame" or "cloak" or "masked" redirect.

 

Interestingly the phone numbers differ in those two examples I found, so I'm wondering if they do this for some kind of call tracking analytics reason.

 

Generally not a good idea to have multiple versions of your website on multiple URL's floating out there (indexable). Tends makes it tricky for Google to decide which is the important one for SEO juice.

 

 

Yes, this is exactly what they are doing with my friends site ..... and interestingly it is loading a different phone number as well. 




freitasm
BDFL - Memuneh
79250 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator
ID Verified
Trusted
Geekzone
Lifetime subscriber

  #2040789 19-Jun-2018 22:39
Send private message

Google deems cloaking a "black hat" trick and penalise domains doing it.

I personally dislike most "SEO experts".




Please support Geekzone by subscribing, or using one of our referral links: Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies | Hatch | GoodSyncBackblaze backup


marpada
475 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #2040848 20-Jun-2018 08:06
Send private message

gibben:

 

Yes, this is exactly what they are doing with my friends site ..... and interestingly it is loading a different phone number as well. 

 

 

This way they can track how many phone leads come from the yellow campaign, instead of people finding the number on the white pages,facebook ...


gibben

46 posts

Geek


  #2040853 20-Jun-2018 08:19
Send private message

marpada:

gibben:


Yes, this is exactly what they are doing with my friends site ..... and interestingly it is loading a different phone number as well. 



This way they can track how many phone leads come from the yellow campaign, instead of people finding the number on the white pages,facebook ...



Thanks all, this all makes sense now. In short, I've blocked all their IP ranges from accessing as an interim measure. The permanent fix is to get them to take it down.

mike
307 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#2040862 20-Jun-2018 08:57
Send private message

Nothing nefarious going on.

The reverse proxy (y9.co.nz) measures phone calls from AdWords so the campaign can be weighted to get more phone calls. It is deprecated in favour of Google Tag Manager as mentioned in OP.

robots.txt is set as follows to avoid any SEO confusion... eg. http://www.tsh.y9.co.nz/robots.txt
User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: AdsBot-Google-Mobile
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /


(I designed this seven years ago and thousands were deployed).

 
 
 

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.
mike
307 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#2040870 20-Jun-2018 09:05
Send private message

gibben:Thanks all, this all makes sense now. In short, I've blocked all their IP ranges from accessing as an interim measure. The permanent fix is to get them to take it down.


Double check in Google Analytics you don't have any recent users on the y9 hostname otherwise you're blocking customers.

SEOJack
2 posts

Wannabe Geek


  #2040885 20-Jun-2018 09:36
Send private message

This is a pretty standard practice (reverse proxy) though not my personal preferred method of call tracking.

 

The y9 version of the site is not indexed by Google (blocked in Robots etc) so avoids the duplicate content penalty.

 

If you test search "site:website.y9.co.nz" in Google you will be able to see if any pages are indexed. If they are then you would be best to take action.


gibben

46 posts

Geek


  #2040890 20-Jun-2018 09:49
Send private message

Thanks all, lots of great advice and answers from all.

chewster
127 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

  #2040911 20-Jun-2018 10:19
Send private message

mike:
gibben:Thanks all, this all makes sense now. In short, I've blocked all their IP ranges from accessing as an interim measure. The permanent fix is to get them to take it down.


Double check in Google Analytics you don't have any recent users on the y9 hostname otherwise you're blocking customers.

 

Yeah don't break the site if AdWords pointing there wink





If my post helped you, consider my referrals (: Sharesies $5 referral code, Skinny 4GB buddy code, Contact Energy $100 promo code


Create new topic





News and reviews »

Air New Zealand Starts AI adoption with OpenAI
Posted 24-Jul-2025 16:00


eero Pro 7 Review
Posted 23-Jul-2025 12:07


BeeStation Plus Review
Posted 21-Jul-2025 14:21


eero Unveils New Wi-Fi 7 Products in New Zealand
Posted 21-Jul-2025 00:01


WiZ Introduces HDMI Sync Box and other Light Devices
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:32


RedShield Enhances DDoS and Bot Attack Protection
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:26


Seagate Ships 30TB Drives
Posted 17-Jul-2025 11:24


Oclean AirPump A10 Water Flosser Review
Posted 13-Jul-2025 11:05


Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7: Raising the Bar for Smartphones
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Samsung Galaxy Z Flip7 Brings New Edge-To-Edge FlexWindow
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Epson Launches New AM-C550Z WorkForce Enterprise printer
Posted 9-Jul-2025 18:22


Samsung Releases Smart Monitor M9
Posted 9-Jul-2025 17:46


Nearly Half of Older Kiwis Still Write their Passwords on Paper
Posted 9-Jul-2025 08:42


D-Link 4G+ Cat6 Wi-Fi 6 DWR-933M Mobile Hotspot Review
Posted 1-Jul-2025 11:34


Oppo A5 Series Launches With New Levels of Durability
Posted 30-Jun-2025 10:15









Geekzone Live »

Try automatic live updates from Geekzone directly in your browser, without refreshing the page, with Geekzone Live now.



Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.