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.
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
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
My Brand new website shows 79% spam Score, what is the reason and how should I deal with this?
Hi, I have just launched my website 1 month before and I have used all paid images, Uniquely written contents, Everything is genuine for better SEO experience in the future. The actual problem is its showing spam by 79% in MOZ bar, I don't have a single link on my website also my content is unique, Images are unique. Why its showing so much spam on this brand new website? Can you please help me? I am very stressed due to this problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rahat640 -
How to find Spam Website?
Hi guys, I'm seo newbie and really want to find websites that hurt seo ranking to avoid get link. Which tools or trick can help me to find those site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | denakalami0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
How/Why do I have so many Spam backlinks?
I was looking in GWT yesterday and found we have several thousand "spam" backlinks...I am curious why this happens and how this happens? There are some links from websites/domains that are not mine that appear to be spam. However, we own a large group of domains and have noticed some of the links are coming from 2 of those sites/domains we own to my main site. The sites/domains are not active, we just own them. I am wondering how someone could access these domains that are not active and create spammy backlinks to my main website? (They created about 20,000 links). Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Hiding content or links in responsive design
Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB0 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0