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Pagejacking

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:51 am

The activity of stealing content (typically in the form of source code) from a Web site and copying it into another Web site in order to siphon some of the original site s traffic to the copied Web pages. Pagejackers rely on search engines to spider the contents of the illegitimate site and index the results so that the copied site will appear in the search result rankings along with the original site s rankings. Users can be tricked into thinking the illegitimate site is the one they are searching for, and once they visit the copied site they may be subjected to mousetrapping.

The term pagejacking is a combination of the words Web page and hijacking, indicating that a Web page has been hijacked.

Also see How Web Search Engines Work in the Did You Know . . . ? section of Webopedia.