Google announced that it has updated its guidance for webmasters on “sneaky redirects”. It has updated the relevant section in its quality guidelines.

It now includes examples that illustrate violations.

“Redirects are often used by webmasters to help forward visitors from one page to another,” says Google’s Aaseesh Marina. “They are a normal part of how the web operates, and are very valuable when well used. However, some redirects are designed to manipulate or deceive search engines or to display different content to human users than to search engines. Our quality guidelines strictly forbid these kinds of redirects.”

The specific examples gives in the section are as follows:

“Search engines shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different.”

“Desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain.”

Google reminds webmasters that it may take manual action, including removal from the index, in reaction to any violation of guidelines. Don’t find out the hard way.

The company has also updated its hacked content guidelines to include redirects and compromised websites.

Here’s some advice from Google on dealing with a hacked site:

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