I'm Getting Attacked, What Can I Do?
-
I recently noticed a jump in my Crawl Errors in Google Webmaster Tools.
Upon further investigation I found hundreds of the most spammy web pages I've ever seen pointing to my domain (although all going to 404 errors):
http://blurchelsanog1980.blog.com/
http://lenitsky.wordpress.com/
These are all created within the last week.
A. What the hell is going on?
B. Should I be very concerned? (because they are 404 errors)
C. What should my next steps be?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Good call Lesley!
-
To expound on what Jane said, I would actually rewrite the headers of these pages to a 410 status code. That way they will drop out of the ranking quicker. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2340728/Matt-Cutts-on-How-Google-Handles-404-410-Status-Codes
-
Hi there,
I see you have deleted the malicious pages appearing on your website - they now return 404 server responses. Unfortunately Google still has several of these pages indexed: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cleanedison.com+%22cialis%22&oq=cleanedison.com+%22cialis%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.1741j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8
It should not take long for these URLs to drop out of the index. When these spam links point to 404 pages, they should not damage your domain but if you see negative rankings movements, the disavow tool is a good option. It can also be used pre-emptively if you are particularly concerned about the volume of these pam links coming in.
-
I'm not so sure I'd jump to the conclusion you've been hacked so quickly (as a few other answers have mentioned). You just have bad backlinks pointing at your site, right? No pages have been created ON your website that you did not allow correct?
If so, it does sound like some sort of negative SEO link building. Be hard to tell how/why they were built without a big analysis - but anyhow - you can disavow them. But I would also look deeper into why they have happened to begin with. Could it be a competitor or someone who has decided to make enemies with you?
-
As Chris H said, your site has been hacked. Your WordPress blog is terribly out of date. There are a few blog plugins that are out of date.
Who do you know that are allowed to access the blog? I have four users listed. I'm guessing admin has been compromised.
-
Have a look at these:
http://www.cleanedison.com/order-generic-cialis-online.html
http://www.cleanedison.com/cialis-price-increase.html
Has your site been hacked?
-
My first step would be to start disavowing all of the links in Google before you get a penalty. It is a pain, but it is worth it compared to getting dropped out of the SERP's.
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
-
Pages mirrored on unknown websites (not just content, all the HTML)... blackhat I've never seen before.
Someone more expert than me could help... I am not a pro, just doing research on a website... Google Search Console shows many backlinks in pages under unknown domains... this pages are mirroring the pages of the linked website... clicking on a link on the mirror page leads to a spam page with link spam... The homepage of these unknown domain appear just fine... looks like that the domain is partially hijacked... WTF?! Have you ever seen something likes this? Can it be an outcome of a previous blackhat activity?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 2mlab0 -
Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage. A few ideas that were mentioned: HURT:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines. HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose. So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.2 -
Our site has too many backlinks! How can we do a bad backlink audit?
Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since. We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice. This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network. 24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close. What's an SEO to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoninjaz0 -
Why is this site performing so well in the SERP's and getting high traffic volume for no apparent reason!
The site is https://virtualaccountant.ie/ It's a really small site They have only about 7 back links, They don't blog They don't have a PPC campaign They don't stand out from the crowd in terms of product or services offered So why are they succeeding in topping the SERP's for difficult to rank for accounting keywords such as accountant and online accounts. What are they doing better than everyone else, or have they discovered a way to cheat Google, and worse still - ME!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Can one business operate under more than one website?
Is it possible for a business to rank organically for the same keyword multiple times with different web addresses? Say if I sell car keys and I wanted to rank for "buy new car keys" and I set up two different website say ibuycarkeys.com and carkeycity.com and then operate under both of these, would Google frown upon this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | steve2150 -
Being Link Attacked - Should I worry?
Hey, Hope everyone is well. Just a quick question. I hope to get an answer from Google officially (I've asked in their webmaster forums area) but any experience or opinions from the community here would be great. I noticed recently that our site started to get thousands of links from comments in random blogs from all across the web. This is nothing to do with us as we don't "build links". I can only assume it is a competitor trying to get our site hit by the algorithm for a particular search term, as all the anchor text (I estimate about 1,800 links with this anchor text) point to one page on our site that is ranking for that term. I recently removed the website from webmaster tools and re added, due to an unrelated issue about the a video rich snippet not updating, and all the links have just popped up today on there. Is this something I need to worry about? and should I start collecting all these domains and using the disavow tool to block the whole domain of these sites with the comments (some of them seem like genuine sites). There seem to be new ones everyday and it looks to be an ongoing attack as well. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0
