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.
Hacked website - Dealing with 301 redirects and a large .htaccess file
-
One of my client's websites was recently hacked and I've been dealing with the after effects of it. The website is now clean of malware and I already appealed to Google about the malware issue. The current issue I have is dealing with the 20, 000+ crawl errors which are garbage links that were created from the hacking.
How does one go about dealing with all the 301 redirects I need to create for all the 404 crawl errors? I'm already noticing an increased load time on the website due to having a rather large .htaccess file with a couple thousand 301 redirects done already which I fear will result in my client's website performance and SEO performance taking a hit as well.
-
This is the correct answer.
To expand on this slightly, just make sure none of the 404s are internal (ie there are no links on your site pointing to one of these dodgy pages as a result of the hack) and you're all good.
Remove the entries from your htaccess file to avoid having to parse them constantly and let any external links to dodgy pages 404. This sort of circumstance is exactly what 404s are made for!
The only site at risk of a ranking drop from these 404s is the one pointing to those dodgy pages - who cares about your hackers' rankings?
-
So robots part could be at the end but in my case it worked fine too.
-
Just a correction here. I agree with all the items above, with one very, very, very, very, very important change.
DO NOT set the corrected urls to disallow in your robots.txt
If you do not allow Google to crawl the pages, Google will not see that the links were removed, that the page is now 4xx, etc. If you were to disallow all those pages, all the clean up work that you have done will not be seen by Google and would be for naught.
If you later want to disallow those pages, that would be fine, but you need to let Google see your clean up work first.
-
Hi
I just finished similar job.
What you should do:
- collect all bad "pages" and links pointing to them
- find a pattern like some kind of directory
- set them (directories I believe?) 410, not 404
- set robots to disallow those directories
- push all pages and links to reindex
- remove from Google index
- done (need to wait some time)
Important thing is to get rid of all bad links pointing to those pages. If you do that, then there'll be no issues. However this could be ongoing negseo. If you need help with that, pm me.
Krzysztof
-
If they are garbage links, why are you redirecting them? Let them 404. Having not found pages does not lead to penalties, in and of itself.
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
-
301 Redirects for Multiple Language Sites in htaccess File
Hi everyone, I have a site on a subdomain that has multiple languages set up at the domain level: https://mysite.site.com, https://mysite.site.fr , https://mysite.site.es , https://mysite.site.de , etc. We are migrating to a new subdomain and I am trying to create 301 redirects within the htaccess file, but I am a bit lost on how to do this as it seems you have to go from a relative url to an absolute - which would be fine if I was only doing this for the english site, but I'm not. It doesn't seem like I can go from absolute url to an absolute url - but I could be wrong. I am new to editing the htaccess file - so I could definitely use some advice here. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amberprata0 -
301 Redirects to relative URLs not absolute a problem?
Hi we recently did a migration and a lot of content changed locations see: https://d.pr/i/RvqI81 Basically, the 301 goes to the correct location but its a relative URL (as you can see from the screenshot) rather than absolute URL. Do you think this is a high priority issue from an SEO standpoint, should we get the developer to change the redirects to absolute? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
Howdy Moz, We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example: http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/ We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to: http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/ Would this be an appropriate solution? RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanOBrien0 -
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes. Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)? We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Can an incorrect 301 redirect or .htaccess code cause 500 errors?
Google Webmaster Tools is showing the following message: _Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. _ Before I contact the person who manages the server and hosting (essentially asking if the error is on his end) is there a chance I could have created an issue with an incorrect 301 redirect or other code added to .htaccess incorrectly? Here is the 301 redirect code I am using in .htaccess: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/.]+/)*(index.html|default.asp)\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(([^/.]+/)*)(index|default) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.example.com)?$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Could adding the following code after that in the .htaccess potentially cause any issues? BEGIN EXPIRES <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 days"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType text/plain "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-icon "access plus 1 year"</ifmodule> END EXPIRES (Edit) I'd like to add that there is a Wordpress blog on the site too at www.example.com/blog with the following code in it's .htaccess: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Thanks0 -
301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site
When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
How to stop Google crawling after 301 redirect?
I have removed all pages from my old website and set 301 redirect to new website. But, I have verified old website with Google webmaster tools' HTML verification file which enable me to track all data and existence of pages in Google search for my old website. I was assumed that, Google will stop crawling and DE-indexed all pages after 301 redirect. Because, I have set 301 redirect before 3 months. Now, I'm able to see Google bot activity on my website with help of Google webmaster tools. You can find out attachment to know more about it. How can it possible & How Google can crawl removed pages? You can see following image to know more about it. First & Second
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Redirecting Canonical 301s and Magento Website
I have an issue with a client's website where it has 3700+ pages, but roughly half of them are duplicates. Thankfully, the only difference between the original and the duplictes is the "?print" at the end of each URL (I suppose this is Magento's way of making a printable page version of the same page. I don't know, I didn't build it.) My questions is, how can I get all the pages like this http://www.mycompany.com/blah.html?print to redirect to pages like this... http://www.mycompany.com/blah.html Also, do they NEED to be Canonical, or will a 301 redirect be sufficient. Also, after having done this, if anybody knows, is there a way I can turn that feature off in Magento, because we're expanding our product line, and I don't want to have to keep chasing after these "?print" pages after the fact.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClifThompson0