Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Ever seen a black hat SEO hack this sneaky?
-
A friend pointed out to me that a University site had been hacked and used to gain top Google rankings. But it was cloaked so that most users wouldn't notice the hack. Only Googlebot and visitors from Google SERPs for the spam keywords would see a hacked version.
See http://www.rypmarketing.com/blog/122-how-hackers-gained-an-easy-1-google-ranking-using-a-university-website.whtml (my blog) for screenshot and specifics.
I've dealt with hacks before, but nothing this evil and sneaky. Ever seen anything like this? This is not our client, but was just curious if others had seen a hack like this before.
-
I have seen stuff like that in the SERP's but the only experience I have of getting hacked is a bit different. I worked in-house for a large travel corporation a couple of years ago and whilst the company's site was fine, their very popular blog wasn't. I just started there and looked at the source code of the blog (for some reason nobody was ever checking that) and found that there were hundreds of links to porn and poker sites hidden by CSS. It was all down to the fact that the blog was on Wordpress and hadn't been updated for a while.
Other than that, we've had sites we host hacked a few times, from hidden links to malware on the sites which of course produced warnings in the browsers. Again, all down to not keeping up with security patches and other updates. I learnt some lessons there.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Is toggle Good For seo
Hi there, I have Client Who dont want to show his content to publicly, So team decided to use toggle, So Google can also See Content, But i want bu sure. Does Google will really cache that Content?? Does it down my website Ranking?? Please any one can Help, I need urgent basis Thnx in advance Falguni
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iepl20010 -
Dodgy backlinks pointing to my website - someone trying to ruin my SEO rankings?
I just saw in 'Just discovered' section of MOZ that 2 new backlinks have appeared back to my website - www.isacleanse.com.au from spammy websites which look like they might be associated with inappropriate content. 1. http://laweba.net/opinion-y-tecnologia/css-naked-day/comment-page-53/ peepshow says: (peepshow links off to my site)07/17/2016 at 8:55 pm2. http://omfglol.org/archives/9/comment-page-196 voyeur says: (voyeur linking off to my site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
July 17, 2016 at 7:58 pm Any ideas if this is someone trying to send me negative SEO and best way to deal with it?0 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
Hey everyone, Just wondering, do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jhinchcliffe1 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0 -
How do I find out if a competitor is using black hat methods and what can I do about it?
A competitor of mine has appeared out of nowhere with various different websites targetting slightly different keywords but all are in the same industry. They don't have as many links as me, the site structure and code is truly awful (multiple H1's on same page, tables for non-tabular data etc...) yet they outperform mine and many of my other competitors. It's a long story but I know someone who knows the people who run these sites and from what I can gather they are using black hat techniques. But that is all I know and I would like to find out more so I can report them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kevin11