There’s a bit of a storm over on Slashdot that involves Threadwatch and the famous GoogleGuy:

Millions Of Pages Google Hijacked Using ODP Feed

The Real Nick W writes “Threadwatch reports that millions of pages are being Google Hijacked using the 302 redirect exploit and the ODP’s RDF dump. The problem has been around for a couple of years and is just recently starting to make major headlines. By using the Open Directory’s data dump of around 4 million sites, and 302′ing each of those sites, the havoc being wreaked on the Google database could have catastrophic effects for both Google and the websites involved.”

GoogleGuy starts off with:

Ugh. This is so not true

This is a placeholder. I’ll include more details of why you shouldn’t listen to Threadwatch.org in a bit, and debunk this some. Let me get this posted and I’ll follow up.

(Yes, I am GoogleGuy.)

Somewhere in the 300+ posts he also suggests Nick at Threadwatch is just performing for the slashdot attention, another person does a whois on Threadwatch’s host and it goes downhill from there.

A few are trying to come up with fixes, some don’t get the problem, and some try to be informative on the issue:

Sassy Dave’s Breakdown of the 302 Issue

The technical part: How it is done
Here is the full recipe with every step outlined. It’s extremely simplified to benefit non-tech readers, and hence not 100% accurate in the finer details, but even though I really have tried to keep it simple you may want to read it twice:

Lots to read!