: Why are these sites cloning my content, and how do I stop them? So I was searching for one of my own websites on Google: http://www.botlibre.com and to my surprise found some clones of my

@Sherry384

Okay. This is a rather odd one, but not as tragic as you would think.

I am not sure what the payoff would be. This makes absolutely no sense to me as to why someone would do this. I cannot see an advantage for the hacker at all. The good news is the visitor is reaching your site. However, there will be a hit from an SEO standpoint so you want to fix this fast.

Your site, I assume, is not on a shared server so if you access your site by the IP address, it will still work. I tested this and it does.

83waystowasteyourtime.adidas.com and mediaiq.astral.com are sub-domains using an old hack that allows anyone to create a sub-domain for any unsuspecting domain. You can read about it here: www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/watch-out-for-dns-sub-domain-hijacking/ There are more sites if you Google subdomain dns hack.

The good news is this. These are not clones or copies of your site, they are your site. Each sub-domain points to your IP address specifically.

You can do a:

> dig 83waystowasteyourtime.adidas.com any


and

> dig mediaiq.astral.comm any


on any linux computer to see.

You can likely combat this, though I am not sure what method will work:

Assuming you have Apache installed, you can edit your .htaccess file within your web root directory and insert the following code.

Add the following at the top of the file to turn on the rewrite engine.

RewriteEngine On


Blocking by host:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^83waystowasteyourtime.adidas.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]


--or--

Blocking by referrer:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^83waystowasteyourtime.adidas.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]


You will want to test these and tell us which one works. Please. It may be we need to fish around for another method.

Of course you can change the rewrite rule and redirect them to your site directly, with:

RewriteRule .* www.botlibre.com [R=301,L]


--or--

Send them to hell (humor) with:

RewriteRule .* www.hell.com [R=301,L]


...which is a real site. But you would passing the problem onto them.

I recommend blocking them.

As @Martijn mentioned in his comment and it is well worth preserving, you can have canonical links per page to help protect you. In this case, the link would point to the page the link is on. It is more work, but it seems like a good idea these days.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/booger-eating-tyrants" />


As well, you can reach the parent domain owners and let them join you in the battle:

Adidas.com

Admin Name: Albert Pedraz
Admin Organization: adidas AG
Admin Street: Adi-Dassler-Strasse 1
Admin City: Herzogenaurach
Admin State/Province:
Admin Postal Code: 91074
Admin Country: DE
Admin Phone: +49.9132844584
Admin Email: adidas@role.noris.net

Tech Name: noris.net Hostmaster
Tech Organization: noris network AG
Tech Street: Thomas-Mann-Str. 16-20
Tech City: Nuernberg
Tech State/Province:
Tech Postal Code: 90471
Tech Country: DE
Tech Phone: +49.91193520
Tech Fax: +49.9119352100
Tech Email: hostmaster@noris.net


Astral.com

Admin Name: Van Tu Duong
Admin Organization: Bell Media Inc.
Admin Street: 9 Channel Nine Court,
Admin City: Scarborough
Admin State/Province: Ontario
Admin Postal Code: M1S 4B5
Admin Country: CA
Admin Phone: +1.5148702477
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: trademarks@bell.ca

Tech Name: Van Tu Duong
Tech Organization: Bell Media Inc.
Tech Street: 9 Channel Nine Court,
Tech City: Scarborough
Tech State/Province: Ontario
Tech Postal Code: M1S 4B5
Tech Country: CA
Tech Phone: +1.5148702477
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: trademarks@bell.ca

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