Open Site Explorer - Top Pages that don't exist / result of a hack(?)

[macthing]

Hi all,

Last year, a website I monitor, got hacked, or infected with malware, I’m not sure which.

The result that I got to see is 100’s of ‘not found’ entries in Google Search Console / Crawl Errors for non-existent pages relating to / variations of ‘Canada Goose’.  And also, there's a couple of such links showing up in SERPs. Here’s an example of the page URLs:

ourdomain.com/canadagoose.php ourdomain.com/replicacanadagoose.php

I looked for advice on the webmaster forums, and was recommended to just keep marking them as ‘fixed’ in the console.  Sooner or later they’ll disappear.  Still, a year after, they appear.

I’ve just signed up for a Moz trail and, in Open Site Explorer->Top Pages, the top 2-5 pages are relating to these non-existent pages: URLs that are the result of this ‘canada goose’ spam attack.  The non-existent pages each have around 10 Linking Root Domains, with around 50 Inbound Links.

My question is:  Is there a more direct action I should take here?  For example, informing Google of the offending domains with these backlinks.

Any thoughts appreciated! Many thanks

[macthing]

Hi Mª Verónica B

That's great, Many thanks for the confirmation.

All the best,

Colin

[VeroBrain]

Hi Colin,

If the backlinks/inbound links are spam, yes upload a disavow file, only related to those.
If multiple ghost pages in WordPress due to erased hacked pages, yes the new hidden page with all the above instructions, only related to the spam pages.
All the best,

Mª Verónica B.

[macthing]

Thanks again Mª Veronica for taking the time to respond.

Ok, if i understand correctly, as those spam / 'canadagoose' related backlinks do indeed exist* , a disavow file for google would be the thing to do here?

There was indeed a hacking, which happened before i came along, which is reported in Google Search Console. And there are 100's of 'canadagoose' related crawl errors with a response code of 404 that just keep coming back.  It looks like those pages did indeed once exist, and must have been deleted by the website developers.  So the 'empty page' technique would apply here?

*It seems to me that the 'canadagoose' pages that have apparently since been deleted , and the backlinks linking to those 'ghost' pages, are all part of the hack:

• hack website, create 'canadagoose' pages
• link to 'canadagoose' pages from other websites

Many thanks,

Colin

[VeroBrain]

Hi Colin,

Not exactly!
We are not talking about backlinks. Backlinks come from other websites, therefore we cannot control them, except upload a disavow file for Google.
That is quite different.

We are talking about the hundred of "ghosts" of deleted pages - we deleted them, because our website was hacked.  
At the time we deleted all those, that is not enough.
Crawlers will "see" 330 or more pages with 404 status!
That is awful for SEO, due to the crawlers/Google "understands" that you do not care about user experience, means you have so many erased pages that if somebody goes there, there will be nothing.

1.- Moz Top Pages to find out all the spam pages and then Google, of course to be sure.
2.- A new page, not completely empty. Should say something like
"We are truly sorry...   Thanks."
This is for the crawlers, it is supposed no human knows about those spam pages. Except the one that hacked your website.
3.- Redirect all spam pages in the list, with a 301 - a permanent redirect  to the noindex/nofollow page you just created.
4:- Verify, copy and past from the list into the navigator and check if goes to the new page, also verify the page status with Moz bar.

Thanks. Good luck,

Mª Verónica

[macthing]

Many thanks for your response Mª Veronica B, very helpful.

I've never used the disavow backlinks tool in Google Search Console.  I would have assumed this is the ideal scenario to use it to disavow _specific _backlinks (not _all _backlinks).  But instead what you're suggesting is:

1. create an empty / hidden (WordPress) Page, and make it noindex / nofollow

2. Get a list of all spam backlinks from Google Search Console

3. Redirect all spam backlinks in the list to the empty noindex / nofollow page

This would never have occurred to me, I'm going to do this right now.

Again, many thanks!

Colin

[VeroBrain]

Hi,

It seems that the website has a similar situation as the one that I shared before.
Although, I had to take immediate action due to it was creating a very serious problem by sending malicious signals to all the crawlers.
Also, I discovered the issue by using the same Moz feature.
Thanks Moz!

https://moz.com/community/q/more-than-450-pages-created-by-a-hacker

In my experience, by sending all those pages to a new hidden page, using a 301 and the noindex and nofollow directives. It is, somehow, sending the right signals to the crawlers of Google and the other search engines.
Let's say strongly informing all the crawlers, that those spam pages/404 are not relevant nor interesting for your website.
Andy's response agrees that is the best solution. Also, he recommends the Wordfence plugin for WordPress as a preventive measure to avoid further issues.
Good luck!