Spam posts indexed, what to do now?
-
Hi,
So we had a staff problem last week and we let some spam posts (cheap nike jerseys etc.) that also got indexed by Google. (We just checked and there are lik 105 already indexed)
Of course we have now removed all these spam posts but what is the best practice at this point? Are we supposed to do something else to remove these from Google's index? (maybe through google webmaster tools?) We have already edited robots.txt to disallow those pages as a quick remedy.
And finally, could this have done any harm? We were quite slow noticing these posts to remove them. They were there for about 12 days.
thanks
-
Good to know
-
Hi,
Thanks for the comprehensive answer. We don't have any vulnerabilities. It was all my fault as I completely forgot that I had given administrative access to one of our former content managers who had temporarily allowed anonymous users to post on this certain section of the site. And once he left, we forgot to update that permission and never really noticed those posts, until today.
-
haha I just say you said "all those links had auto-nofollow on them"
NO PROBLEM MAN! rest easy! You cannot get penalized for nofollow links!
-
Thanks for the quick response. We're just requesting URL removal for all those URL's. I hope this makes it all good. No sign of ranking drop at the moment. We're lucky those pages were automatically filtered out by our sitemap.xml and all those links had auto-nofollow on them. Time to consider buying a service like Mollom I guess.
-
Do you know how the spam posts were published on your site? Just make sure the vulnerability is fixed so it doesn't happen again. Once the spam posts you found have been deleted from your site, you shouldn't have to do anything more since they will fall out of Google's index. Keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools though to see if you notice any more spam pages pop up on Google's radar and then manually remove them.
Here is Google's official answer - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734
When a page is updated or removed, it will automatically fall out of our search results. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen.
However, if you urgently need to remove content from Google's search results (for example, if you’ve already removed, updated, or blocked a page accidentally displaying confidential information like credit card numbers), you can request expedited removal of those URLs.
Our removal tools are intended for pages that urgently need to be removed—for example, if they contain confidential data that was accidentally exposed. Using the tools for other purposes may cause problems for your site.
Another Google resource if your site was actually hacked or compromised - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1269119
To take your site "offline" after being hacked. If your site was hacked and you want to get rid of bad URLs that got indexed, use the URL removal tool to remove any new URLs that the hacker created—for example, http://www.example.com/buy-cheap-cialis-skq3w598.html. But we don't recommend removing your entire site, or removing URLs that you'll eventually want indexed. Instead, clean up the hacking and let us recrawl your site.
-
So someone was posting articles on your site that linked to other sites like paid links?
If you removed the posts no need to block them in robots.txt because they no longer exist so will not get crawled anymore. Yes definitely request removal in WMT URL removal tool and get those pages out of Google's index ASAP.
You're probably OK. Just keep your fingers crossed and an eye on rankings and run a tight ship so that doesn't happen again, definitely something you can get penalized for. Good thing you caught it quickly.
EDIT: if you meant that you let spam comments get posted live/approved by the admin then all you can do is remove the spammy posts and make sure your comment settings are set to need admin approval before getting posed live. No need to block in robots.txt or remove URLs in that case but it doesn't hurt. If the links are off of your site you should be fine.
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
-
Google is indexing our old domain
We changed our primary domain from vivitecsolutions.com to vivitec.net. Google is indexing our new domain, but still has our old domain indexed too. The problem is that the old site is timing out because of the https: Thought on how to make the old indexing go away or properly forward the https?
Technical SEO | | AdsposureDev0 -
Google Webmaster Image Index Issue
I submitted the image sitemap in GWT and only few of them get indexed in google, but now the indexed images are also getting de-index. Any solution for it? See the attached E4hPDQE
Technical SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
My video sitemap is not being index by Google
Dear friends, I have a videos portal. I created a video sitemap.xml and submit in to GWT but after 20 days it has not been indexed. I have verified in bing webmaster as well. All videos are dynamically being fetched from server. My all static pages have been indexed but not videos. Please help me where am I doing the mistake. There are no separate pages for single videos. All the content is dynamically coming from server. Please help me. your answers will be more appreciated................. Thanks
Technical SEO | | docbeans0 -
Why is this page not ranking but is indexed?
I have a page http://jobs.hays.co.uk/jobs-in-norfolk and it is indexed by Google but will not show up for any keywords I try. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | S_Curtis0 -
Pages to be indexed in Google
Hi, We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages. Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone. My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate. If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Getting querystring indexed?
Hi everybody! I work with tags a lot on my photo blog but I haven't gotten Google to index one tag so far. Any tips on how to do this? Thanks / Niklas
Technical SEO | | KAN-Malmo0 -
Search Result Page, Index or Not?
I believe Google doesn't want to index and show other search result pages in there SERP.
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle
So instead of adding "noindex, follow" tag i have changed the url in my search result page like this: Original
http://www.mysite.com/kb-search.aspx?=travelguide&type=wiki&s=3 To
http://www.mysite.com/travelguide/attraction-guide.html And the search result page contains the title of the articles, a short descriptions (300 chars.) and a link to the articles. Does it help? Or should i add noindex, follow tag? Helps Please?0 -
Getting a citation page indexed
Howdy mozzers, I have a citation on a .govt domain with 2 links pointing to my site. The page is not indexed by Google, bing or yahoo. URL; http://www.familyservices.govt.nz/directory/viewprovider.htm?id=17077 I have tried getting the paged indexed by building bookmark links to it. I have tweeted the url and gotten a few re-tweets for it. But no luck. The page has got no nofollow meta tag. Other listings have been indexed by google. Could someone please advise on means to help me get the page indexed? A strategy that I have not yet tried is submitting a sitemap that includes the external url as I am not sure if it is possible to include url's not part of my domain. Any advice, help would be greatly appreciated. viva le SEOmoz Thanks
Technical SEO | | ihms1