Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
-
Hi Guys,
I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected.
All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part
The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links.
I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively.
I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine.
Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty?
Thanks, Duncan
-
Piggybacking on Kane - since these bad/phantom pages were in one folder, can you request removal in Search Console? It should at least speed things up. Unfortunately, the links can show for weeks or months after they're removed, even if Google doesn't seem to be caching them. If the pages aren't indexed/cached, and the numbers in the console seem to be gradually dropping, I'm not sure if there's a lot more you can do, unfortunately.
-
Hey Duncan, sounds like you've covered the basics. If this had happened a month ago I'd tell you to wait it out, but since it's been 5 months it seems like it should have cleared up by now if it was simply a matter of waiting for Google to deindex everything.
I've put a note out to other associates on Moz Q&A to see if they have any suggestions.
-
We got a hacked site warning on Google results for the company Brand name....but nothing in the Search Console.
Performance is not exactly site wide - some pages only rank for exact match page title search term but not any variations... (e.g. Very Green widgets - page title - the site will rank for Very Green widgets but no variations e.g. Green widgets).
Other pages seem to be fine.... but none rank on page one.
It does seem those pages that had the most links pointing to them have been affected the worse. However, that said - there is a page that that has several 1000 internal spammy links showing but the page does rank ok and does rank for different keywords....another piece of the puzzle!
We checked rankings and at the time of the hack - the site definitely dropped.
Hope that helps!!
Duncan
-
Gotcha... It's fairly standard to see old links in Search Console that have long since been removed, so that concerns me less as long as the 404s are showing up properly and getting noindexed.
Did you receive any "hacked site" warnings in Search Console back in May?
As far as performance issues - is this sitewide, or does it just seem to be occurring on the pages that had the most links pointed at them? Do you still have any pages ranking in top 3 for a semi-competitive term? Out of the pages that did have spammy links to them, are any performing well - on page 1 for target keyword?
-
HI Kane
Thanks for your response! We did do a disavow just on some old directories which looked ok - but it was more of a precautionary measure.
CMS is now all good and secure.
The spammy links were a in subfolder which was deleted (creating 1000's of 404's). The website was then entirely moved to a new secure hosting environment.
Just on your questions...
Yes - the website was fine up until the hack.
The hack happened in May of this year.....a full clean up happened within 3 days after the attack.
Your last point.....yes - they are showing up as 404's. The website initially had 17,000 spammy 404 errors. Google has since reduced that to 3000. As these pages are removed from the index, this gives me hope that the problem is being resolved.
However - the strange part - even though the 404's are being reduced in Webmaster, the number of internal spammy links showing in the Console are not being reduced. It's static.
For example, the homepage shows 6,300 internal links. In reality it only has about a 120. The rest are all spammy (404) links. I do believe that this is causing ranking problems.....? Do you think that is right?
Thanks, Duncan
-
Hi Duncan,
Here's some initial thoughts on steps I would take:
- Since external links are fine, there shouldn't be a need to do anything disavow-related, but I would definitely do that if you see any external links pointed to those old pages, which is common with hacked sites.
- Sounds like you've covered your bases regarding preventing the site from getting hacked again at a CMS level, database level, plugin level, etc., so I'll assume that is good to go.
- If these spammy internal pages were all in a specific subfolder, you could block that subfolder via Robots.txt to send a stronger signal that the URLs should be ignored and de-indexed.
- The internal links should disappear as the pages are removed from the index, but that can take awhile, and it's not uncommon for Search Console to display pages/links/data that have since gone away.
And a couple of questions for you:
- Once those bases are covered, then you're still faced with the potential "penalty", or poor performance. I'm assuming that these pages not ranking in Google were performing well before the site hack?
- How long has it been since the site was initially hacked, and how long since full cleanup was completed?
- Are the spammy internal pages showing up as 404 crawl errors yet?
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
-
How long Google will take to Disavow a link?
Just want to know how long will Google take to Disavow a link? I uploaded my file on 18 Dec 2020 and today is 5th January 2021 and still, that link is appearing in my Search Console in Top linking domains. Anyone who recently done this practice and how long it took? I mentioned the domain name below and hopefully, it will disavow all the links [subdomain+www+without www] coming from that domain. domain:abcd.com Help me out, please...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seotoolsland.com0 -
What does Google's Spammy Structured Markup Penalty consist of?
Hey everybody,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | klaver
I'm confused about the Spammy Structured Markup Penalty: "This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines." Does this mean the rich elements are simply removed from the snippets? Or will there be an actual drop in rankings? Can someone here tell from experience? Thanks for your help!1 -
My rankings are not stable. Do I need to be worry about it
Hi, My client has an ecommerce website. He is ranking on top for many strong keywords. However with two prime keywords he is unstable. My client's business is in UK. Hence we are checking in Google UK. We are noticing that from 4rth Dec that our single keyword is unstable and home page at times ranks in top 10 and at times out of the picture. Please help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Devtechexpert0 -
How to deal with spam heavy industries that haven't gotten the hammer from Google?
One of our clients works in the video game category - specifically, helping people rank higher in games like League of Legends. In spite of our trying to do things the right way with white hat link building, we've suffered when trying to compete with others who are using comment and forum spam, private blog networks, and other black hat tactics. Our question is - what is the right approach here from a link building perspective? Is it an "if you can't beat them, join them" or do we wait it out and hope Google notices and punishes those who don't play nice? Some test terms to see what we're up against: "elo boost" and "lol coach." Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who's dealt with a similar situation.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kpaulin0 -
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory (http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org/) with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SearchParty0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Bad link backs out of my control
I have a big concern with my website. Recently I have been combing through the back links that I have been able to find associated with my web domain. Almost half of the links- 52 links- are from kinder-host. They are from what looks like could be valid sources, like babies-r-is.com/kinder-host.com or babies.kinder-host.com/page/6 etc. but they are junk. Some of these links are from articles I've written that are ripped off and placed on these websites along with my links. Some of the sites I can't even find the link but its there somewhere. Another 40 of the links are from attracta.com and although I can tell I have links on there to my website as well, I don't even see the link on the page and it is not related to my website. It's another junk site. So, I have bad link backs and no control over it. My understanding is this is potentially very harmful to my website! What can I do about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JAGA0 -
What are some of the worst links that you have come across?
I'm talking the least relevant and incredibly spammy. We've all done site audits and stumbled across some ridiculous ones. The funnier the better. I'm compiling a list of hilarious links that sites have gotten. Any input would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KevinBloom0