Spam URL'S in search results
-
We built a new website for a client.
When I do 'site:clientswebsite.com' in Google it shows some of the real, recently submitted pages. But it also shows many pages of spam url results, like this 'clientswebsite.com/gockumamaso/22753.htm' - all of which then go to the sites 404 page. They have page titles and meta descriptions in Chinese or Japanese too.
Some of the urls are of real pages, and link to the correct page, despite having the same Chinese page titles and descriptions in the SERPS.
When I went to remove all the spammy urls in Search Console (it only allowed me to temporarily hide them), a whole load of new ones popped up in the SERPS after a day or two. The site files itself are all fine, with no errors in the server logs.
All the usual stuff...robots.txt, sitemap etc seems ok and the proper pages have all been requested for indexing and are slowly appearing. The spammy ones continue though.
What is going on and how can I fix it?
-
Whoa, this is a weird one.
I saw that you posted this on Google's forums as well, and they suggested that this might be the Japanese keyword hack. Did you look into that? If that's not it, did you try loading the URLs that are showing up on the Wayback Machine? It's possible that someone who owned this site before your client created these pages.
Either way, the answer is to double check that your 404 pages really are 404ing. If that doesn't remove them from the index fast enough, you can actually create all of those pages, with a noindex tag, add them all to a sitemap, and submit them to Google. But the 404ing is really your long term solution.
Good luck!
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
-
Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page
Hi everyone, I run a website in the travel industry where most users land on a location page (e.g. domain.com/product/location, before performing a search by selecting dates and times. This then takes them to a pre filtered dynamic search results page with options for their selected location on a separate URL (e.g. /book/results). The /book/results page can only be accessed on our website by performing a search, and URL's with search parameters from this page have never been indexed in the past. We work with some large partners who use our booking engine who have recently started linking to these pre filtered search results pages. This is not being done on a large scale and at present we only have a couple of hundred of these search results pages indexed. I could easily add a noindex or self-referencing canonical tag to the /book/results page to remove them, however it’s been suggested that adding a dynamic canonical tag to our pre filtered results pages pointing to the location page (based on the location information in the query string) could be beneficial for the SEO of our location pages. This makes sense as the partner websites that link to our /book/results page are very high authority and any way that this could be passed to our location pages (which are our most important in terms of rankings) sounds good, however I have a couple of concerns. • Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative? • Whilst all the content that appears on the pre filtered /book/results page is present on the static location page where the search initiates and which the canonical tag would point to, it is presented differently and there is a lot more content on the static location page that isn’t present on the /book/results page. Is this likely to see the canonical tag being ignored / link equity not being passed as hoped, and are there greater risks to this that I should be worried about? I can’t find many examples of other sites where this has been implemented but the closest would probably be booking.com. https://www.booking.com/searchresults.it.html?label=gen173nr-1FCAEoggI46AdIM1gEaFCIAQGYARS4ARfIAQzYAQHoAQH4AQuIAgGoAgO4ArajrpcGwAIB0gIkYmUxYjNlZWMtYWQzMi00NWJmLTk5NTItNzY1MzljZTVhOTk02AIG4AIB&sid=d4030ebf4f04bb7ddcb2b04d1bade521&dest_id=-2601889&dest_type=city& Canonical points to https://www.booking.com/city/gb/london.it.html In our scenario however there is a greater difference between the content on both pages (and booking.com have a load of search results pages indexed which is not what we’re looking for) Would be great to get any feedback on this before I rule it out. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | GAnalytics1 -
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
Sitemap issue? 404's & 500's are regenerating?
I am using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to generate a sitemap on http://www.atozqualityfencing.com. Last month, I had an associate create redirects for over 200 404 errors. She did this via the .htaccess file. Today, there are the same amount of 404s along with a number of 503 errors. This new Wordpress website was constructed on a subdirectory and made live by simply entering some code into the .htaccess file in order to direct browsers to the content we wanted live. In other words, the content actually resides in a subdirectory titled "newsite" but is shown live on the main url. Can you tell me why we are having these 404 & 503 errors? I have no idea where to begin looking.
Technical SEO | | JanetJ0 -
What's the issue?
Hi, We have a client who dropped in the rankings (initially from bottom of the first page to page to page 3, and now page 5) for a single keyword (their most important one - targeted on their homepage) back in the middle of March. So far, we've found that the issue isn't the following: Keyword stuffing on the page External anchor text pointing to the page Internal anchor text pointing to the page In addition to the above, the drop didn't coincide with panda or penguin. Any other ideas as to what could cause such a drop for a single keyword (other related rankings haven't moved). We're starting to think that this may just have been another small change in the algorithm but it seems like too big of a drop in a short space of time for that to be the case. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s in Magento
Hi there, I’ve just completed the first crawl of my Magento site and SEOMOZ has picked up 1,000’s of duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s due to the sort function which appends URL’s with variables when sorting products (e.g. www.example.com?dir=asc&order=duration). I’m not particularly concerned that this will affect our rankings as Google has stated that they are familiar with the structure of popular CMS’s and Magento is pretty popular. However it completely dominates my crawl diagnostics so I can’t see if there are any real underlying issues. Does anyone know a way of preventing this? Cheers,
Technical SEO | | WendyWuTours
Al.1 -
What's the best format for a e-commerce URL product page
We have over 2000 non branded experiences and activities sold through our website. The website is having a face lift with the a new look and a stronger focus on SEO. As part of this, I am keen to establish what the best practice is for product based URLs. I've researched the market and come up with a few alternatives that are used: domain/category/subcategory/activity_name domain/activity_name/category/subcategory/activity_reference domain/generic_term/activity_reference/activity_name domain/category/activity_location/activity_name Activities are location based but the location can change (say once every 2 years). Activity names, category, subcategory and activity_reference rarely change. Are there any thoughts/ research on the best method? (If there is one) Many thanks in advance for your insights.
Technical SEO | | philwill0 -
Similar category names result in similar urls and duplicate anchor texts
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce website about car tuning and car parts. There are main categories like ( Aerodynamics, Power tuning, Interior, Wheels, Tires, etc. ) and in the products are organized in sub-categories representing the product manufacturer, car manufacturer and car model + modification. Unfortunately this kind of structure creates duplicate sub-category names. For example we can have parts for Audi A4 8K in Aerodynamics and ABT, and the same time we can have Power tuning from the same manufacturer and for the same car, or Sport brakes for the same car by different manufacturers. So here are how some links look-like: /alfa-romeo-147-c1070-en /alfa-romeo-147-c234-en /alfa-romeo-147-c399-en These are totally different categories, with the same anchor text and almost the same url addresses ( the only difference in the urls is the category id ). Can this be affecting the site's indexation, and which can be the better way to create the internal link structure ?
Technical SEO | | mdimov0