Recovering from a Hack: How long until Google reindexes changes?
-
In a previous post I made, I was able to determine that one of my sites; http://pokeronamac.com/ was hacked and was feeding spam perscription drug content to search engines, then redirecting to another site when clicked on Google.
I then contacted my web host, and, after they did a scan of our files, they determined that something within the wp-includes directory was compromised and malicious. They removed the file, though they weren't able to determine the source of the attack, or how they god in (should we be scared?). Anyway, its been several days now ~5 and if I do a site search the spam pages still show up, but the redirect is no longer working.
At this point, I am at a standstill, because i'm loosing traffic on my site by about 90%, and google hasn't sent us any warnings of malaware or the like. I know I was recommended against this before, but should I attempt to submit a reconsideration request, or should I just wait it out?
Thanks for your help,
Zach
-
If I were going to name a plugin that was NOT likely to be the cause then Akismet would probably be top of that list. Nothing is guaranteed of course, but Akismet probably the mostly widely used wordpress plugin available. If there was an issue with that I think everyone would know.
-
I have had a word press site hacked in the past......
Once we eliminated the issue. I installed some additional security and changed passwords etc.
This seemed to take care of it.
I am not sure, but I want to say a plugin the customer had called Akismet may have played a role....?
-
I'm not an expert of wordpress. However my approach for any compromised CMS would usually be something like:
- Ensure that you have a full back up of all content and media
- Put up a test install of the core CMS (most up to date version)
- Import content and media to the test install
- test test test test
- Only install plugins that are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, and then only if they are well used by others, without reported problems and from trusted sources
- test test
- Once you are happy that your test version is good create a full backup
- Now delete the live site
- Change all passwords
- Copy the test install
-
I didn't realize that it was still redirecting. Do you recommend we completely replace the WordPress core? and then go through the plugins?
-
Your site appears to be infected with a trojan and still redirecting users. I wouldn't expect traffic and earnings to return until that issue is fixed.
Most WP hacks are down to either a bad installation or a bad plugin. The core files are pretty good as long as they are kept up to date. Get the mess cleared up and reudce your plugins to the absolute bare minimum. They research each one to see if others have had problems.
I wouldn't suggest waiting it out. That will achieve nothing.
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
-
How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages. I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great". My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index. Some background The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down. It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
Search Behavior | | tosbourn0 -
Anyone facing issues with Google Analytics today?
For some reason all pages on our site seem to be taking ages to load as they seem to be getting stuck at the "waiting for google-analytics.com"! Anyone else facing similar issues today?
Search Behavior | | prsntsnh0 -
How do I know if I have been hit with a Google penalty
How can you tell if you have been hit by the Panda update as I have a Page rank 3 Homepage, several 100 other pages but no page rank is flowing through to these pages they are all zero? Thanks
Search Behavior | | webguru20140 -
My website disappears off google!
So this might be kinda of a weird question... Every morning and night I check the ranking of a website that I am building.. The ranking has gone up a lot the last two months. It went from the fifth page to now the second page. I have a issue where some days I check Google my website is completely gone! I go through every page for my keyword and it's not there! After a couple of days of frustration I check again and all of a sudden it is there but now at a higher ranking... I went through the code to make sure there's a not a not follow code in the robots.txt page... Btw another weird thing is so then I look up my website on a google out of country like google.sg and I'm ranking first page like number 5 but again disappeared off google usa. Literally driving my crazy.. does anyone know why this could be? Btw the first time it disappeared I went into webmasters and sent a request because I thought I got penalized but they responded they could not find any spam and I was NOT penalized...
Search Behavior | | BecCan0 -
Looking for something better than Googles in page analytics
Buongiorno from 12 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 I'm interested in measuring content engagagement, things like what gets clicked on mouse tracking beahaviour etc. Google Analytics in page analytics does a good job but is there another product able to guage user interactive behaviour with content (Yes ive added event tracking). Thanks in advance,
Search Behavior | | Nightwing
David1 -
Google indexing PDF's
Hello, We work heavily on E-commerce SEO and recently Google has started to index PDF pages (Datasheets) added to the product pages instead of the actual product pages. Has anyone else noticed this at all? Seems to have got worse over the last month or so. Thanks
Search Behavior | | voipme0 -
Google Rel="Next" & Rel="Prev"
Hello, I have a catalogue website and I am implementing the rel="next" and rel="prev" to the website. My question is that we do have a view all page also, which apparently Google likes over a 'page1'.. Should I add the canonical to this page? I already have it set to WEBSITEURL/sonos (which is going well) I don’t want to have to change this to [URL]sonos/view-all (which is my view all link) as the first page is getting ranked well I am then telling Google no, the view all page is the parent. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Rick
Search Behavior | | Lantec0 -
SERPs changing on an hourly basis
Hi Mozzers, Can anyone help me please. I have a client that is ranking in position 2 for his major keyword in G.co.uk. He's been moving up but over the last 7 - 10 days he's moved down, then back up and around and around the front page which we all know can happen. The thing is - this is changing through the day 4 or 5 times in some cases. I've checked when the first page of the SERPs have been indexed via the cached button and normally Google hasn't crawled the competition or my guys site on the given day the changes happen, yet he's been 2, 5 and 7 and back to 2 in about 3 hours. Are these social signals do you think? whats going on - any ideas? Cheers Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0