Road Runner Hijacks Mispelled URLs
I first noticed this tonight. If you have ever read anything I have written you will notice that I misspell quite a bit, and typo even worse.
I am in San Diego, and our ISP is Road Runner. Usually if I enter the wrong URL, then I will get a google suggestions of other url’s. I guess Road Runner figured out they were missing out on a gold mine.
When I typed in Google.co instead of Google.com I got the following result.
Then I tried it again, with the same result.
Then I tried entering Nike.ne just to see what happened, and again the same thing. I blew it up this time so it was more visible.
It says that it is powered by Yahoo Search, so there must be some kind of arrangement there.
It also has an opt in/ or out of this service button at the bottom.
That takes you to this screen that you can opt in or opt out of the service.
I will be opting out, but I doubt it will be found by most users.
I wonder if this is a response to Google’s replacing peoples 404 pages that are beyond the minimum size ( I believe only with a certain toolbar).
By the way, I was talking to SEO Pamela Lund today about this, and she asked me about regular 404’s within a domain. I realized I had not checked that yet, so I checked that tonight Feb. 25th. They appear o.k.
After creating the above image, I am just imagining how ridiculous it will look when actually in a wordpress page!
Anyone else seeing this?
What do you think?
dk
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This is caused by the Roadrunner DNS server. If the domain you enter is invalid it sends you to their “spam” page instead of an error page. I suggest you change your DNS server to http://www.opendns.com/ . OpenDNS would recognize “google.co” & “nike.ne” as being typos and would send you to the correct site.
ReplyJim,
This was a brand new thing that Road Runner started doing.
To make sure I understand you, are you referring to when I am at my P.C. and I send a command out to the internet to find a site? as opposed to someone looking on my site for one of my pages?
Just want to make sure I understand you.
Either way, this action from Time Warner Cable just started two nights ago, and is new.
Thanks for the wisdom!
Replydk
I cannot styand sites that highjakc mis-entered URLs. Sure, they are open territory for anyone, but sometimes, when a URL is mis-entered it takes my browser takes me somewhere I really don’t want to go. Its annoying. I wish it would just say that said URL does not exist or can’t be found.
Reply404 PAGE NOT FOUND
is the only appropriate answer
to malformed URL’s under any
condition.
It informs you to check your entry
all else is AOL.
jr
ReplyPeople actually take advantage of mis-entered URLs? This is all new to me, but makes sense. When I mis-enter Facebook, it usually takes me to an actual page, and not a “page cannot be found” page. Interesting. I’m assuming people make money off of this.
Reply