Google Indexing & Caching Some Other Domain In Place of Mine-Lost Ranking -Sucuri.net Found nothing
-
Again I am facing same Problem with another wordpress blog.
Google has suddenly started to Cache a different domain in place of mine & caching my domain in place of that domain.
Here is an example page of my site which is wrongly cached on google, same thing happening with many other pages as well - http://goo.gl/57uluq
That duplicate site ( protestage.xyz) is showing fully copied from my client's site but showing all pages as 404 now but on google cache its showing my sites.
site:protestage.xyz showing all pages of my site only but when we try to open any page its showing 404 error
My site has been scanned by sucuri.net Senior Support for any malware & there is none, they scanned all files, database etc & there is no malware found on my site.
As per Sucuri.net Senior Support
It's a known Google bug. Sometimes they incorrectly identify the original and the duplicate URLs, which results in messed ranking and query results.
As you can see, the "protestage.xyz" site was hacked, not yours. And the hackers created "copies" of your pages on that hacked site. And this is why they do it - the "copy" (doorway) redirects websearchers to a third-party site [http://www.unmaskparasites.com/security-report/?page=protestage.xyz](http://www.unmaskparasites.com/security-report/?page=protestage.xyz) It was not the only site they hacked, so they placed many links to that "copy" from other sites. As a result Google desided that that copy might actually be the original, not the duplicate. So they basically hijacked some of your pages in search results for some queries that don't include your site domain. Nonetheless your site still does quite well and outperform the spammers. For example in this query: [https://www.google.com/search?q=](https://www.google.com/search?q=)%22We+offer+personalized+sweatshirts%22%2C+every+bride#q=%22GenF20+Plus+Review+Worth+Reading+If+You+are+Planning+to+Buy+It%22 But overall, I think both the Google bug and the spammy duplicates have the negative effect on your site. We see such hacks every now and then (both sides: the hacked sites and the copied sites) and here's what you can do in this situation: It's not a hack of your site, so you should focus on preventing copying the pages: 1\. Contact the protestage.xyz site and tell them that their site is hacked and that and show the hacked pages. [https://www.google.com/search?q=](https://www.google.com/search?q=)%22We+offer+personalized+sweatshirts%22%2C+every+bride#q=%22GenF20+Plus+Review+Worth+Reading+If+You+are+Planning+to+Buy+It%22 Hopefully they clean their site up and your site will have the unique content again. Here's their email flang.juliette@yandex.com 2\. You might want to send one more complain to their hosting provider (OVH.NET) abuse@ovh.net, and explain that the site they host stole content from your site (show the evidence) and that you suspect the the site is hacked. 3\. Try blocking IPs of the Aruba hosting (real visitors don't use server IPs) on your site. This well prevent that site from copying your site content (if they do it via a script on the same server). I currently see that sites using these two IP address: 149.202.120.102\. I think it would be safe to block anything that begins with 149.202 This .htaccess snippet should help (you might want to test it) #-------------- Order Deny,Allow Deny from 149.202.120.102 #-------------- 4\. Use rel=canonical to tell Google that your pages are the original ones. [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en) It won't help much if the hackers still copy your pages because they usually replace your rel=canonical with their, so Google can' decide which one is real. But without the rel=canonical, hackers have more chances to hijack your search results especially if they use rel=canonical and you don't. I should admit that this process may be quite long. Google will not return your previous ranking overnight even if you manage to shut down the malicious copies of your pages on the hacked site. Their indexes would still have some mixed signals (side effects of the black hat SEO campaign) and it may take weeks before things normalize. The same thing is correct for the opposite situation. The traffic wasn't lost right after hackers created the duplicates on other sites. The effect build up with time as Google collects more and more signals. Plus sometimes they run scheduled spam/duplicate cleanups of their index. It's really hard to tell what was the last drop since we don't have access to Google internals. However, in practice, if you see some significant changes in Google search results, it's not because of something you just did. In most cases, it's because of something that Google observed for some period of time.
Kindly help me if we can actually do anything to get the site indexed properly again, PS it happened with this site earlier as well & that time I had to change Domain to get rid of this problem after I could not find any solution after months & now it happened again.
Looking forward for possible solution
Ankit
-
Hi Ankit,
I already mentioned the files that were changed in our case: header.php, functions.php and some entries in DB.
Here are some links for step by step malware removal (don't depend on plugins for malware removal entirely)
http://securepress.org/tutorial-how-to-remove-malware.php
https://www.optimizesmart.com/malware-removal-checklist-for-wordpress-diy-security-guide/
http://hasibul.info/blog/2015/11/25/how-to-remove-malware-from-wordpress-sites/I hope this helps if the problem persists then contact me again.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Hello Vijay,
Did you face exact same issue? Also Is it fixed now? If so which particular files had issues & what kind of codes were added so I can look for similar codes
-
Hi Ankit,
We have faced a similar problem with one of our clients, it's almost always the malware code which remains hidden in functions.php or header.php or the DB or cache files which creates the problem.
Scuri or most of the security plugins will show the file as clean but the code remains hidden somewhere in the website, and re-emerges on when spiders/carwalers hit the website ( and for some users as well).
Please get the website code and DB reviewed properly.
It would help, I hope this works out for you.
Best Regards,
Vijay
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
-
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Google only indexing the top 2/3 of my page?
HI, I have a page that is about 5000 lines of code total. I was having difficulty figuring out why the addition of a lot of targeted, quality content to the bottom of the pages was not helping with rankings. Then, when fetching as Google, I noticed that only about 3300 lines were getting indexed for some reason. So naturally, that content wasn't going to have any effect if Google in not seeing it. Has anyone seen this before? Thoughts on what may be happening? I'm not seeing any errors begin thrown by the page....and I'm not aware of a limit of lines of code Google will crawl. Pages load under 5 seconds so loading speed shouldn't be the issue. Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yandl1 -
In the google index but search redirects to homepage
Hi everyone, thanks for reading i have a website "www.gardeners.scot" and have the following pages listed in google site: command http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-landscaping-Edinburgh.htm & http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-maintenance-Edinburgh.htm however when a user searches for "garden landscaping Edinburgh" or "garden maintenance Edinburgh" we are in the rankings but google search links these phrases to the home page not to their targeted pages. the site is about a year old have checked the robots.txt, sitemap.xml & .htaccess files but can see anything wrong there. any ideas out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | livingphilosophy0 -
How to reverse declining Google rankings?
We have a long established business since 2004 and have been fortunate that having been one of the original companies in our industry, we have always enjoyed strong Google rankings. Unfortunately, these have been steadily declining over the past couple of years and a comparison of August to date against the equivalent period last year has seen a 20% drop in traffic from Google. We don't believe that it is being caused by a penalty and rather is the result of some strong players entering our market and tightening their focus which has caused us to take a dip in rankings. We are guilty of being complacent in our SEO - largely due to not knowing what to do and being scared to touch it when it was working in case we broke it! - but now it's time to fight back. We still have a strong site, good traffic levels and a strong product offering. We have knowledge of SEO and resources in house, but are not experts by any means. Our current plan is to: perform a technical site audit, fixing the issues highlighted by the Moz Pro Software put strong emphasis on our blog, writing daily about the latest news and events in our industry provide weekly content articles which are more in depth than the daily blog articles and which will be of interest to our community undertake surveys and publish infographics and statistics with the hope of being picked up in national newspapers Are there any key elements that we are missing out in this plan, or is that it in a nutshell? Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Rank Tracker Result Not Reflected In Google
I'm tracking keyword results in Rank Tracker, but I can't confirm the positions when I do a Google search for the tracked keywords. Does anybody know why RT says the site should be #23, but is not actually in Google? Is there a way to check Google results from different data centers? If I recall, Google allowed the option to view results from different cities, though I don't know if they still allow this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
How long does google index old urls?
Hey guys, We are currently in the process of redesigning a site but in two phases as the timeline issues. So there will be up to a 4 week gap between the 1st and 2nd set of redirects. These urls will be idle 4 weeks before the phase content is ready. What effect if any will this have on the domain and page authority? Thanks Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daracreative0 -
My site rank is not consistent. Once it at first page , then for the next week it is not found in top 100 position. Again two/ three weeks later it ranked automatically without any work. Why this is happening?
Here's the following are available in my site: robot.txt file is included sitemap available Natural link building going on. in a week total 100 links we are creating. 30 social bookmarks, 30 directory submission, 20 blog comments, 20 forum links All the blog and forum links are from relevant sources. Please help me ..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coldfireinc0 -
Google Not Indexing Description or correct title (very technical)
Hey guys, I am managing the site: http://www.theattractionforums.com/ If you search the keyword "PUA Forums", it will be in the top 10 results, however the title of the forum will be "PUA Forums" rather than using the code in the title tag, and no description will display at all (despite there being one in the code). Any page other than the home-page that ranks shows the correct title and description. We're completely baffled! Here are some interesting bits and pieces: It shows up fine on Bing If I go into GWT and Fetch as Google Bot, it shows up as "Unreachable" when I try to pull the home-page. We previously found that it was pulling 'index.htm' before 'index.php' - and this was pulling a blank page. I've fixed this in the .htaccess however to make it redirect, however this hasn't solved the problem. I've disallowed it from pulling the description .etc from the Open Directory with the use of meta tags - didn't change anything. It's vBulletin and is running vBSEO Any suggestions at all guys? I'll be forever in anyones debt who can solve this, it's proving to be near impossible to fix. Here is the .htaccess file, it may be a part of the issue: RewriteEngine On DirectoryIndex index.php index.html Redirect /index.html http://www.theattractionforums.com/index.php RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.theattractionforums.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trx
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*.(xml|txt)(.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|cron|vbseo_sitemap/)
RewriteRule ^((archive/)?(..php(/.)?)?)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^forum/(.*)$ http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [R=301,L]0