How to Block 301 redirects from third party domains in apache

301-redirectapache-2.2redirect

A client of mine is receiving traffic from domain names which he wants to stop. The trouble I have is that they are using a 301 redirect which our server is just seeing as a normal web hit from the visitor. No referer is picked up in the logs either so blocking them via the relatively normal method of mod_rewrite won't work. Nor will blocking the hosting servers IP as again, the traffic in Apache is showing as coming from a standard visitor.

Is there any other way of blocking this sort of traffic?

Example Apache output for a visit which has been 301'd from another domain:

my_ip_here – – [09/Jun/2011:18:01:49 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 14012 "-" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)"

Best Answer

The answer from http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/2261.htm worked for me:

<Limit GET PUT POST>
order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from .offendersite.net
</Limit>

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?offendersite.net/.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.*$
RewriteRule ^.* - [F]

Related Solutions

Apache Logs – Not Showing Requested URL or User IP

It's because it really is coming from the localhost -- it's Apache talking to itself.

See http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/InternalDummyConnection

.htaccess redirect not preserving http_referer header

RFC doesn't specify any referrer-specific behavior in status 301 definition, nor 301-specific behavior in Referer header definition. Thus, I have to say that although this referrer-preserving behavior is logical, it is not defined in RFC and thus you can never be sure.

In short i don't belive you will be able to acomplish this with either redirect or mod_rewrite.

Your best bet would be to make a simple php code to redirect the user which will maintain the HTTP_REFERER.

Put a file named index.php on your domain root with the bellow content:

<?php
   header( 'Location: http://www.oursite.com/' ) ;
?>

Make a .htaccess and put it in your domain root directory with the bellow content:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php$
RewriteRule . index.php

The .htaccess file will take care that anything typed to reach your domain will hit the index.php and the index.php will take care for redirecting to the site it needs to hit.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Apache Logs – Not Showing Requested URL or User IP

.htaccess redirect not preserving http_referer header

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