Hacked Server IP Range Penality?

[vforvinnie]

I use a justhost.com reseller account to host about 15-20 of my own websites.  None of the sites are related, nor do I interlink or do anything blackhat with any of them.  All of the sites have unique content.  Some of it isn't great, but I didn't use a writing service on any of then, it was all written by myself.

Recently I found a list of my sites (as well as about 200 others hosted by justhost) on a hacker website that listed the cpanel usernames.  I alerted the host and the issue is being fixed.  I am changing all of my usernames and passwords for all of the sites.

Anyway, I recently took a look at some analytics and rankings and noticed that I lost a lot of my rankings on a handful of those sites recently.  I know there was the big de-indexing of junk blogs recently, but I don't think that is the case.  I can still find all of my sites in Google, they are just out of the first 50 results, when a majority of them were ranked from 5-20 in the SERPs.

Here are three of the sites and their phrases:

http://nintendoconsoles.com/ "nintendo consoles" - This domain I bought from someone so there could be some sort of sandbox period for it.

http://webhostingfordrupal.com/ "web hosting for drupal" - This was a new register.

http://seotirical.com "seotirical" - we don't show up, but all of the tweets and links to us do. - This was a new register.

I realize these sites aren't perfect, and might not have been ready for the first page.  The Nintendo site is about 3 months old, but the Drupal site has been around for 8+ months.  I might try adding a fresh piece of content tonight to see if that helps, but I thought it was curious that it happened across the board with about 5-6 sites on my one reseller account.  I don't even know if the top portion of this post has anything to do with the problems, but I thought I'd see if anyone has insight.

Cheers,
Vinnie

[vforvinnie]

Shane,

Thanks again for the response.  I agree those pages aren't the strongest, and don't have a ton of great content.  A few of my other sites have more than 2-3 articles, and the content is rich with media.

I guess time and content will tell.  If after a few weeks of adding some new content and building a few links nothing has improved, I will start to worry.  It just seems shocking that one of my sites that has been holding the 6th position for it's exact match phrase (and has some links/social) dropped completely out of the top 50.

The sites and pages are still indexed, but only come up when you search the exact URL.

Vinnie

[Jinx14678]

by hit, do you mean de-indexed or just bumped down aggressively?

Cause the ones you gave seem to be affiliate sites, with thin content, and light design elements, so I can definitely see how these could have been devalued.

Here is the reason I am pretty sure it is not a "Hack Penalty"

First, I am not sure that exists - Google cannot interpret if you have been hacked or not, only if their is malicious intent on your site due to or after the hack.

And as to your password being readily available.. anyone could create a site like this, with passwords, and without google going through each page on the web like this, they would not know if it was real or not. (it is also very easy to brute-force or rainbow a commercial host)

This creates a whole new realm for Google as web avenger, as well as SERP integrity protector.

I am just not sure the password release could be involved.

UNLESS!

A penalty was leveraged against justhosts ENTIRE commercial subnet, due to a issue that was caused due to this password release.

But I do not think you or the sites would be singled out due to the password release, only if something bad enough happened that got Google's attention..

BUT then i believe you would be de-indexed, not de-valued.... (blacklisted)

hopefully this opinion was clear as mud

[vforvinnie]

Shane,

Thanks for the input.  I agree about securing down the site first.  I have checked webmaster tools, and no messages are coming up.  No suggestions at all are coming up.

I looked into it a bit more, and it seems like 90% of my sites on that one host were hit, but none of my other sites on different hosts were affected at all.  I am gonna try to add a piece of fresh content to each site this week, and maybe get a few social signals.  I am not panicking yet, but when  I see that 10 sites have all lost all of their rankings (and aren't even showing up for their title tags), it's slightly concerning to me.

[Jinx14678]

I believe they are coincidental...

I am not sure Google would take action on the entire Subnet range, for a password breach.

I believe it is only when malicious intent is found or suspected, and the release of passwords was not a malicious act in its own.

Check your Webmaster Tools for Malware messages, and see if there are any other messages. As say, you might have just fell victim to the latest round of quality checks from algorithm -  You may have just been bumped -

The idea of first making sure you are protected - then trying to get some fresh content and social signal/links is probably the route I would take.

Shane