URL Index Removal for Hacked Website - Will this help?
-
My main question is: How do we remove URLs (links) from Google's index and the 1000s of created 404 errors associated with them after a website was hacked (and now fixed)?
The story: A customer came to us for a new website and some SEO. They had an existing website that had been hacked and their previous vendor was non-responsive to address the issue for months. This created THOUSANDS of URLs on their website that were then linked to pornographic and prescription med SPAM sites. Now, Google has 1,205 pages indexed that create 404 errors on the new site. I am confident these links are causing Google to not rank well organically.
Additional information:
- Entirely new website
- Wordpress site
- New host
Should we be using the "Remove URLs" tool from Google to submit all 1205 of these pages? Do you think it will make a difference? This is down from the 22,500 URLs that existed when we started a few months back. Thank you in advance for any tips or suggestions!
-
Yes.
Disavow needed for each site (http/https).
-
Thanks for clearing this out.
If i have spammy links on http version, but my site is now https, i should upload the same disavow list on both http and https? (i saw one answer of yours in other thread saying just that , and i think is important because many of us are missing this detail) -
If they are not your - it's better to disavow them. If they are spammy - disavow them.
Those links may hurt your ranking.
-
Hi Pete, something in your answer got my attention.
Like one month ago , i saw some (as was proven later) spammy links pointing to one specific page of my site. Those links ( from 20+ domains) were coming from some german domain names with the ltd .xyz extension.
Now the links don't actually exists, but those referring pages saying 410 Gone (nginx server).
Is that bad for that spesific page of mine?
I never saw in past this http status. -
If your "bad" link is like http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html then your .htaccess should be:
Redirect 410 /flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html
that's all.Yes - you should do this for ALL 1205 URLs. Don't do this on legal pages (before hacking), just on hacked pages. I say "gone" with 410 redirect. It's amazing. In your case gone for good. Time for identify that 1205 URLs and paste them into .htaccess is let's say X hours. Time for identify that 1205 URLs and temporary remove them is Y hours. Since "temporary removal" is up to 30 days this make same job each month. In total for one year you have X in first case and 12*Y in second case. You can see difference, right?
Also today Barry Adams release story about hacking:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/website-hacked-manual-penalty-google/
and it's amazing that site was hacked just for 4 hours but Google notice this. You can see there traffic drop and removal from SERP. Ok, i'm not trying to "fear sells", but keeping bad pages with 404 will take long time. In Jan-Feb 2012 i have new temporary site on mine site within /us/ folder and even today Jan 2016 i still receiving bots crawling this folder. That's why i nuke it with 410. This save the day!On your case it's same. Bot is wasting time and resources to crawl 404 pages over and over but crawling less your important pages. That's why it's good to nuke them. ONLY them. This will save bot crawling budget on your website. So bot can focus on your pages.
-
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your response! I saw you answered a similar question about a week ago, so thank you for weighing in on my options. So, to clarify, I must do this for all 1,205 of the URLs?
One SPAM link is pointing here: http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html so in your above example, this would look like:
Redirect 410 /dir/http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html/ (?) and do this for each page that Google has indexed?
I saw your example with the iphone on the other post. How did you get that page to say, GONE - The requested resource...
-
The best is to keep them 404. But fast is to 410 them.
All you need is to place this topmost somewhere of .htaccess:
Redirect 410 /dir/url1/
Redirect 410 /dir/url2/
Redirect 410 /dir1/url3/
Redirect 410 /dir1/url4/But this won't help you if your URLs have parameters somewhere like index.php?spamword1-blah-blah. For this you need extended version like this:
RewriteEngine on
#RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword
RewriteRule ^(.)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword1
RewriteRule ^(.)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword2
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]So why 410? 410 act much faster than 404 but it's DANGEROUS! If you sent 410 to normal URL this is effective nuking it. I found that with 410 bot visit this url 1-2-3 times, but with 404 bot keep visiting over and over eating your crawling budget. URL removal in SearchConsole is OK, but it's fast but works only for 30 days. And will eat almost same time as building list for 404/410s. Hint: You can speedup crawling if you do "fetch and render" then submit to index.
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
-
How to get a large number of urls out of Google's Index when there are no pages to noindex tag?
Hi, I'm working with a site that has created a large group of urls (150,000) that have crept into Google's index. If these urls actually existed as pages, which they don't, I'd just noindex tag them and over time the number would drift down. The thing is, they created them through a complicated internal linking arrangement that adds affiliate code to the links and forwards them to the affiliate. GoogleBot would crawl a link that looks like it's to the client's same domain and wind up on Amazon or somewhere else with some affiiiate code. GoogleBot would then grab the original link on the clients domain and index it... even though the page served is on Amazon or somewhere else. Ergo, I don't have a page to noindex tag. I have to get this 150K block of cruft out of Google's index, but without actual pages to noindex tag, it's a bit of a puzzler. Any ideas? Thanks! Best... Michael P.S., All 150K urls seem to share the same url pattern... exmpledomain.com/item/... so /item/ is common to all of them, if that helps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Does Google Index URLs that are always 302 redirected
Hello community Due to the architecture of our site, we have a bunch of URLs that are 302 redirected to the same URL plus a query string appended to it. For example: www.example.com/hello.html is 302 redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc The www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc page also has a link canonical tag to www.example.com/hello.html In the above example, can www.example.com/hello.html every be Indexed, by google as I assume the googlebot will always be redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc and will never see www.example.com/hello.html ? Thanks in advance for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommRulz0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
HTTPS pages - To meta no-index or not to meta no-index?
I am working on a client's site at the moment and I noticed that both HTTP and HTTPS versions of certain pages are indexed by Google and both show in the SERPS when you search for the content of these pages. I just wanted to get various opinions on whether HTTPS pages should have a meta no-index tag through an htaccess rule or whether they should be left as is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamie.Stevens0 -
Will Creating a Keyword specific Page to replace the Category Section page cause any harm to my website?
I am running a word press install for my blog and recently had 3 of my main keywords set as categories. I recently decided to create a static page for the keywords instead of having the category page showing all the posts within the category, and took it off the navigation bar. I read about setting the categories to use NO index so the search engines can shine more importance on the new pages i created to really replace where the category was showing. Can this have a negative effect on my rankings? http://junkcarsforcashnjcompany.com junk car removal nj is showing the category section, So i placed the no index on it. Will the search engines refresh the data and replace it with the new page I created?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
Help needed for a 53 Page Internal Website Structure & Internal Linking
Hey all... I'm designing the structure for a website that has 53 pages. Can you take a look at the attached diagram and see if the website structure is ok? On the attached diagram I have numbered the pages from 1 to 53, with 1 being the most important home page - 2,3,4,5, being the next 4 important pages - 6,7,8... 15,16,17 being the 3rd set of important pages, and 18,19,20..... 51,52,53 being the last set of pages which are the easiest to rank. I have two questions: Is the website structure for this correct? I have made sure that all pages on the website are reachable. Considering the home page, and page number 2,3,4,5 are the most important pages - I am linking out to these pages from the the last set of pages (18,29,20...51,52,53). There are 36 pages in the last set - and out of this 36, from 24 of them I am linking back to home page and page number 2,3,4,5. The remaining 8 pages of the 36 will link back to pages 6,7,8...15,16,17. In total the most importnat page will have the following number of internal incoming links: Home Page : 25 Pages 2,3,4,5 : 25 Pages 6,7,8...15,16,17 : 4 Pages 18,19,20...51,52,53 : 1 Is this ok considering home page, and pages 2,3,4,5 are the most important? Or do you think I should divide and give more internal links to the other pages also? If you can share any inputs or suggestions to how I can improve this it will greatly help me. Also if you know any references for good guides to internal linking of websites greater that 50 pages please share them in the answers. Thank you all! Regards, P.S - The URL for the image is at http://imgur.com/XqaK4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arjun.rajkumar810 -
Removing large section of content with traffic, what is best de-indexing option?
If we are removing 100 old urls (archives of authors that no longer write for us), what is the best option? we could 301 traffic to the main directory de-index using no-index, follow 404 the pages Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0