My site was hacked and spammy URLs were injected that pointed out. The issue was fixed, but GWT is still reporting more of these links.
-
Excuse me for posting this here, I wasn't having much luck going through GWT support.
We recently moved our eCommerce site to a new server and in the process the site was hacked. Spammy URLs were injected in, all of which were pointing outwards to some spammy eCommerce retail stores. I removed ~4,000 of these links, but more continue to pile in. As you can see, there are now over 20,000 of these links. Note that our server support team does not see these links anywhere.
I understand that Google doesn't generally view this as a problem. But is that true given my circumstance? I cannot imagine that 20,000 new, senseless 404's can be healthy for my website.
If I can't get a good response here, would anyone know of a direct Google support email or number I can use for this issue?
-
Hi
Yeah, lets say they use Xrumer.
They hack your site, insert pages of their own, and links on your pages.
They put those urls in text files based on their keyword targets/groups.
They run the software, using those list with their link sources and using their auto insert random url template.
So that pings a 404 to GWT so the 404 shows up there.
If these are pros, they already know that the pages are dead by now, as they confirm links after each run. It just takes a bit more time for GWMT to get notified so you'll see them trickle in.
So you'll see those 404 pages getting links from different dates.
Hope that helps
-
I don't understand why more spam links would be coming in though. Is it because the spam network doesn't realize that I've removed the injected pages? In other words, are they unknowingly linking to 404s?
-
Since those URLs are already gone after you cleaned it up, you can just mark those as fixed. GWT usually is pretty late with picking those up. I've handled my share of hacked sites, some with invisible links.
If they appear again, then you'll need to find where they are getting through. It's a pain but you have to fully check your files for scripts and encrypted codes.
Aside from those, it's just time. Google will eventually stop showing them.
Good luck Andrew!
PS. You might want to look at some of your pages using Google's cache result. You can see invisible links using that. Just in case you haven't done this part.
-
Thank you for your response.
I also believe I was hacked through my wordpress. What exactly did you do once you realized the htaccess file was changed? Did you change it back to whatever code was there before?
I already submitted a reconsideration request to Google and it was successful. I no longer have "this site may be hacked" in the SERPs, but I still have thousands of urls pointing to 404 pages.
-
-
Samething happened to me a last month due to a securrity break in a pluggin that was part of my wordpress theme.
After hacked the site with injected url and also altering htaccess file (check that out) they changed the htacces file in order that if you enter your url you could see the correct version of your web, but if you enter your website in a google search traffic wen to this spammy viagra stuff pages.
I also recieved a manual action on my site.
What i did:
1- removed the injected files that were creating the spammy urls
2- edited the htacces file locating what code they had changed
3- summited a reconsideration request explaining what it was happening
4- Removed on webmaster tools al url that were spammy created on my site to remove them from google index
After 10 days manual action was removed. But till know i still have spammy links to 404 on my site. This happens because they also hacked other sites and creates like spammy linking networks. Has people start recovering their sites the amount of links to this pages will reduce.
My experience this big amount on 404 it has affected on about 30% of traffic. This traffic has know recovered almost completly and the amount on 404 is reducing with time.
So my conclusion is that this 404 are not healthy but they will be gone with time and your site will recover.
-
Ha, sorry about the initial test post. It wasn't publishing on my main computer at first.
-
Can you please be more specific.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Please let me know if I am in a right direction with fixing rel="canonical" issue?
While doing my website crawl, I keep getting the message that I have tons of duplicated pages.
Technical SEO | | kirupa
http://example.com/index.php and http://www.example.com/index.php are considered to be the duplicates. As I figured out this one: http://example.com/index.php is a canonical page, and I should point out this one: http://www.example.com/index.php to it. Could you please let me know if I will do a right thing if I put this piece of code into my index.php file?
? Or I should use this one:0 -
Tools/Software that can crawl all image URLs in a site
Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png
Technical SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
How do you link your adaptive mobile site to Google Analytics?
With Google now saying they're putting a lot more emphasis on mobile sites, we recently got notifications from Google Webmaster Tools saying that some of our pages are not built for mobile. Some of these pages, however have an adaptive page that when you visit from a mobile phone (m.mysite.com), you're taken to instead of the desktop version. My question is, how do I let Google know that I have an adaptive site and not get penalized for poor mobile usability? I already have Google Analytics on the mobile site, I just need to somehow let Webmaster tools / Google's web crawlers know that they should be looking to my mobile site for usability, not the desktop site. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
Strange URL redirecting to my new site
Hi all, I recently relaunched a site on a brand new URL - www.boardwarehouse.co.uk. I've spent the last couple of weeks building some backlinks as well as developing a basic content strategy. We've started ranking for a few of our less competitive keywords which is great, however there's a strange site which either redirects or is mirroring our content. I'm at a complete loss as to what's causing this to happen and what i can do to stop it. On the attachment - my content is top and second. The fourth result is the offending site. Any help/ advice would be most helpful! Thanks in advance, Alick 0BSyNn6
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
Site Wide Links
I have a link on pr 3 home page website placed in the side bar. It is on a WordPress website that spans a couple hundred pages and the side bar is on every page. The majority of the pages are not ranked or have any pr. Can this affect me negatively?
Technical SEO | | raph39880 -
E-commerce site multi language product urls
Hi, On my E-commerce site I use optimized Url's (product names) with my native language (Hebrew) I am going to translate some of the product pages to English with differnat descriptions, correct layout, etc... But I was wandering about the product Url's. Should I stay with the original product URL and add a language parameter to the url? Should I add a completely new URL using the English product name? Of course what I'm worrying the most of is duplicate content. Thanks, Asaf
Technical SEO | | AsafY0 -
How to produce no follow links on my joomla site
Hi i have been reading that if you have links going out of your site then this can damage your site, so i have been trying to find out, how i can do no follow links for some of the affliate sites that i have on my site. I have a couple of adverts on my site and i would like to turn these into no follow links while the rest of my internal links on my page are to stay follow links but in joomla i am not sure how to do this. can anyone please give me some advice
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Deep Page Link - url no longer exists
I used Open Site Explorer and found a link to our site on http://www.business.com/guides/bedding-supplies-3639/ The link was setup to go to an important, deep page on my website, but the structure of our urls changed and the url no longer exists. The link (anchor text 'National Hospitality Supply') does direct to our homepage, www.nathosp.com. My question is, am I receiving full link juice? Or would I be better served to create a 301 redirect to the revised / new page url? In case it matters, if I had my choice I'd prefer the link to go to the intended deep page. Thanks in advance for your insight. -Josh Fulfer
Technical SEO | | mhans0