Google Webmaster Tools - Inappropriate Keywords
-
In December our website was the victim of a devastating pharma hack. Google Webmaster Tools never reported malware on our website, but our keywords within Webmaster Tools were all changed to keywords related to mens and ladies watches.
Our Google organic search rank and resulting traffic has been dramatically impacted.
Since realizing we were hacked, we rebuilt our website from the ground up with a clean and updated installation of Joomla CMS (from 1.5 to 2.5) and changed to a more secure server. As of December 21st, 2012, our website has been clean of the phama hack.
We wrote Google and told them what happened. They replied with a "no manual spam actions were found" message.
Unfortunately, Google Webmaster Tools still reflects all of the hacked keywords for mens and ladies watches.
We are watching our Google Webmaster Tools everyday waiting for Google to remove the hacked keywords. It's been a little over a month and still only about 5 of the first 100 keywords have anything to do with our website.
What do you recommend we do to expedite the removal of these inappropriate keywords in Google WMT?
-
Ok so first we need to determine if Google has re-indexed all the page on your site.
In WMT look for a "wrong" key phrase bringing impressions for your site.
The last column on that page will show your average position under that key phrase. We are looking for a "wrong" key phrase that has a really high position(first or second page hopefully). Really this is just to make it easier to find in the results.
Now that you've got a key phrase do a google search for that phrase and scour to see if your website is still showing in the results. Keep in mind the data in WMT is an average position, not an exact position. So I usually dig a souple of page down if I don't see it right away.
If you are in the results still, What is the Title and Description for your site showing?
If it still shows "Watches..." etc in the Title/description, chances are Google Hasn't re-indexed that particular page. Take that specific URL and do a fetch as Google through WMT. Once it has done the fetch you should be able to submit the URL for re-indexing.
It will probably take a day, but that URL should be fixed pretty quickly.
On Scope, yes I'm talking about limiting the dates. You should be able to do this in the upper right hand,. If you can't find it send me a private message and I can try to show you another way.
-
Paul,
Sorry to hear that you were also a victim of the pharma hack. Glad that things have cleared up for you. Any advice in your recovery with Google is appreciated.
I also appreciate your quick response. This hack has been so upsetting. We have been over a month in trying to figure this out and fix the issues that have come up and it still it seems it has been going at a snail's pace.
I just went into my WMT keywords and just for the keyword "watches" (and variants of it) we have 3,184,773 occurances.
I don't know what you mean by "limiting the scope of data" on WMT keywords. I don't see any date in the keyword area of WMT. How do we limit the scope of data?
When I look at the search query area almost 100% of those search terms are related to our website. So, that's excellent. It's just the keywords that are messed up and totally ridiculous!
We have resubmitted our website and I saw from our Googlebot fetch that all terms were out 12/24/12 and have been since then.
Thanks again, Paul.
-
Hey Angela,
A majority of the keywords in WMT are related to impressions. I would pick a few of the top improper key words and search them to see if your site is still showing up.
If yes: Is the Pharma hack title/description still showing up? You can try resubmitting your pages for indexing through webmaster tools individually. You could also resubmit your sitemap thru WMT if you have a whole lot of pages.
If No: Try limiting the scope of data you are looking at in WMT to when you know for sure that the issues were fixed. Beyond just the issues being fixed though you need to determine when Googlebot actually updated its records to reflect the removal of the pharma hack, so keep limiting the scope until you see all of the pharma hack key phrases go away.
I've been the victim of pharma hack before, and unfortunately it just takes a little time for everything to clear up. Hopefully the above suggestions are helpful.
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
-
Keyword position
I fixed all the crawl issues but still my website is in second page.
On-Page Optimization | | NueveSolution0 -
Are Meta Keywords Still A Thing?
Hey all! First post on here, forgive me for being an SEO newb. Are meta keywords still a thing? Here's why I ask, I read this article from back in 2009 that said they are absolutely not a ranking factor anymore: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html However, in doing some research on our competition, I found that the top result for "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" was this company: http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/ Honestly, the site seems to be doing everything opposite of what I read to do. It isn't even mobile responsive! With the Moz Bar, I found that no links pointing toward it. Not one video on the site (there is a link to a welcome video but the link is broken!!), no blog or regular content updates, no keywords in the H1 or H2 tags, page titles, etc. The website looks old and, frankly, terrible. Really I’m stumped how this can be ranking so high for so many competitive keywords. Then I realized that they stuffed tons of keywords in the meta description and meta keywords. From what I can tell, this is the ONLY intentional SEO strategy they used. Am I missing something? Are meta keywords still a ranking factor and THAT important?
On-Page Optimization | | otherside130 -
Google Crawl Errors from vbseo change
We have vbseo setup on our site and for some reason a setting was changed unexpectedly and was un-noticed where it changed the URL of all the pages and so none of our pages were getting indexed by google any longer due to 401 errors. Most of our SE traffic fell off. We discovered the issue a couple weeks ago and we changed the setting back so that the URLs are the same as they were originally before but in Google webmasters it's still showing crawl errors and our search engine traffic hasn't recovered at all. We have sitemaps being sent daily.
On-Page Optimization | | RudySF0 -
Google Custom Search
Hello, Is there anyone use goolge custom search? and will it improve my website ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Disavow Tool
2 Questions any help appreciated: I have had a spam url in my Disavow file with Google since last September but it still shows up as linked to my site, is this correct? If a url has say 100 pages all with your anchor text and it is a spam website do you Disavow the domain url or do you have enter all the pages in the Disavow spreadsheet?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Location in keyword terms
I'm optimizing a website for a dentist and I'm looking for the best approach to incorporating the location into the keyword terms. For example if a dental practice in Boston has a page on Cosmetic Dentistry what would be the best approach for optimizing for "Boston Cosmetic Dentist", "Boston Teeth Whitening" and "Cosmetic Dentist in Boston"? How should I handle the repetition of the location name? Will I get the best results by using the full keyword terms several times on the page "example a" or will "example b" provide similar results? Title Tag: a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
On-Page Optimization | | OptioPublishing
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening H1
a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening keywords to sprinkle through content
a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Boston Teeth Whitening, Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Teeth Whitening etc... It's important to rank for all 3 keywords but the pages would be flooded with the words Dentist and Boston if I use each phrase exactly. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance,
Jason0 -
Recommendation of second target keyword
Hi there, Our company is selling airline tickets and more products within the travelling market like car rental, hotels and holidays. Now we are busy to improve our google ranking because the market of airplaine tickets is hard with many competitors. At this moment we are optimizing our offer pages. Our Strategy: 2 Keyword focus on that specific page
On-Page Optimization | | vliegticketsnl
1. Vliegtickets + Destination
2. Vliegticket, ticket or tickets + Destination Both keywords will be in the title tag. Example: vliegtickets + destination - brandname - vliegticket, ticket or tickets + destination h1 = Vliegtickets + Destination
h2 = Vliegticket, ticket or tickets + Destination Now we know that there is a big search volume on the keywords "goedkope vliegtickets" and we do not focus on these words on the offer pages of a destination. Goedkope vliegtickets could be translate like cheap airplane tickets. At the homepage of our offers we are focussing on goedkope vliegtickets, is it wise to continue doing that at the other pages also, instead of vliegticket, ticket, tickets + destination. Will goedkope vliegtickets + destination make the keyword combination vliegtickets + destination more strong and could it improve our google ranking? Or should we keep it like we do now, because vliegticket, ticket or tickets + destination is familiar to vliegtickets + destination? Hope to hear your opinion so we could decide what to do with our onpage strategy. Next thing to do than is linkbuilding. Thank you in advance.0 -
SERP Rankings for Certain Keywords
For some of our keywords, we rank on page one in google, but the page is an individual product and not the catelgory page? Any idea why this is happening? Thanks for your Help!
On-Page Optimization | | MRabidoux0