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A random domain is 301ing all its URLs to my domain.

When you request a URL to the domain in question via https, it responds by 301ing to my site (also https) with the original request URL intact. This is happening via cloudflare (who are probably unaware that their service has been configured to behave in this way by the owner of the domain in question, but it's clear that my domain name is configured as the 301 target, not IP). The domain has no origin server as far as I can tell.

The reason I spotted it is due to a number of 404s appearing in my analytics data. After looking through my web logs, I can see the requests with an initiator of the domain in question. When I hit that domain I get the 301 to my site. The IP address of the domain (via DNS lookup) is different and not associated with any IP addresses for my web property. My site is operating from a single IP (that has not changed in 2 years) with no other sites pointed to that IP. My webserver only responds to request for my domain name on both http and https (via SNI).

Googlebot has started to report 404 errors in search console starting 4 days ago.

Is this malicious? Will it affect my domain ranking/reputation in any way?

I should say that I have ruled out that my web server has been compromised in anyway. It has been fully PEN tested and I've deployed a clean VM and fresh instance of the code to check the bahviour persists.

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  • You are not alone.not sure what the payoff is. You do not say what web server you are using. You may be able to 403 these. However, there is no harm in 404s. Sure it is annoying, but not destructive. What web server are you using?
    – closetnoc
    Commented Apr 26, 2018 at 0:46
  • @closetnoc, I'm using nginx, I did think the payoff might be search ranking sabotage, organic search traffic seems to have dipped
    – keith
    Commented Apr 26, 2018 at 8:20

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