There’s a big discussion going on in the SEO world about Google Proxy Hacking - the reason? Someone can knock your website off Google’s search results using a free (and widely available) web proxy.

In trying to produce better search results, Google has introduced various measures like a Duplicate Filter to show only unique pages and a Supplemental Index to weed out weak pages. Google Proxy Hacking exploits the duplicate filter by using a web proxy to reproduce someone else’s (e.g. competitor’s) webpage, with the intention to get it removed from the search results.

Duplicate filter exploits are not new, and previous tactics have included manually copying the original page wholesale and using scrapper bots to automatically post them on blogs. However because the duplicate pages were hosted somewhere, you could instruct the perpetrator to remove the infringing pages or use a lawsuit to force them.

Things are a little more complicated with web proxies.

What is a web proxy? Most schools, colleges and even offices in the west implement firewalls to block access to sites like Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, etc. The reason is to prevent students and staff from “wasting time” on these sites. By using a web proxy (e.g. Myspace Proxy X), you can “trick” the firewall and anonymously access any website you want. The way it works is that you visit the proxy, type-in the URL and the requested pages are first downloaded to the proxy and then to your PC.

So in addition to being a legitimate tool, the requested pages are dynamically created (i.e. not actually hosted) on the proxy so there’s virtually no way to sue the proxy owners - we’ll just have to wait until Google refines their Duplicate Filter algo.

In the meantime, I’d advise heading down to Dan Theis’ blog for a read because he has devised some methods to protect websites from proxy hacking.