Definition

A sneaky redirect is a redirect designed to take visitors somewhere other than the page they expected, often showing search engines one version of a page while sending users to another. Google's spam policies treat this deceptive use of redirects as manipulation.

Redirects themselves are a normal part of the web; site migrations, address changes, and consolidating duplicate URLs all rely on them legitimately. The policy distinguishes those uses from redirects that deceive, such as serving search engines indexable content while routing real visitors elsewhere, or sending only certain users to unexpected destinations.

Examples

• Search engine versus user split

  A page presents one type of content to search engine crawlers while redirecting human visitors to a substantially different page.

• Device-targeted redirect

  Mobile visitors are redirected to an unrelated spam domain while desktop visitors see the original page.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Spam policies (Sneaky redirects)

Related terms

• Spam Policies
  Google's published rules describing behaviours and techniques that can lower a site's ranking or remove it from search results.
• 301 Redirect
  A permanent redirect — an HTTP 301 status code telling clients and search engines that a URL has moved permanently to a new location.
• 302 Redirect
  A temporary HTTP redirect (status 302 Found). Search engines keep the original URL indexed because the move is signalled as temporary.
• Cloaking
  Showing search engines and users different content with the intent to manipulate rankings and mislead visitors.
• Doorway Page
  A page created mainly to rank for specific queries and funnel visitors to another destination rather than serve them directly.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Crawling & Indexing