Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    10
    1224
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • FranGen
      FranGen last edited by

      Hello All,

      I launched my site on May 1 and as it turns out, another domain was pointing it's A-Record to my IP. This site is coming up as malicious, but worst of all, it's ranking on keywords for my business objectives with my content and metadata, therefore I'm losing traffic.

      I've had the domain host remove the incorrect A-Record and I've submitted numerous malware reports to Google, and attempted to request removal of this site from the index. I've resubmitted my sitemap, but it seems as though this offending domain is still being indexed more thoroughly than my legitimate domain.

      Can anyone offer any advice? Anything would be greatly appreciated!

      Best regards,

      Doug

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard @FranGen last edited by

        Yes, sorry, Fetch as Google: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=158587

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • FranGen
          FranGen @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

          Thanks Cyrus. Do you mean Fetch as Google? I'm not too familiar with that specific tool.

          Just in case someone runs into the same issue that I've encountered, I'll include my final steps in remedying this problem (hopefully).

          I was finally able to contact the webmaster of the other domain who agreed to take down the site. I contacted GoDaddy to confirm her site was down, since I wasn't risking getting my machine infected with malware. Next I went to Webmaster Tools and requested content removal, page by page until all of the bad URLs were submitted.

          In my frustration and possibly paranoia, I've also had to battle with GoDaddy to get a new dedicated IP address since I believe this IP could now be "tainted" or flagged as a malicious or spammy.

          Cyrus, you couldn't be more accurate. Extremely tough to wait out. Hopefully this will help someone out down the road.

          Thanks again.

          Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cyrus-Shepard
            Cyrus-Shepard @FranGen last edited by

            Hi Edward,

            You might have already done this, but:

            1. Crawl as Googlebot to your homepage - submit all pages and all linked pages to index.

            2. You said you submitted your sitemap. Submit it again.

            3. Hopefully this will resolve in a couple weeks. Tough to wait it out.

            FranGen 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • FranGen
              FranGen @Highland last edited by

              Nope, it doesn't. I guess it's just a waiting game at this point. Thank you again.

              Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Highland
                Highland @FranGen last edited by

                Does it still resolve to your site? If not, it should fall off as Google spiders it again.

                FranGen 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • FranGen
                  FranGen @Highland last edited by

                  Thank you! This will prevent future issues, but in terms of the other domain pulling rank on mine, is that something I need to wait out since I have no control? Is there any way to have it removed?

                  Highland 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Highland
                    Highland @FranGen last edited by

                    Your htaccess file can do the 301 (it's actually a config file you can control). Here's some sample code that should do the trick.

                    RewriteEngine on
                    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
                    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com
                    RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

                    FranGen 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • FranGen
                      FranGen @Highland last edited by

                      Thanks for your reply! It's hosted with GoDaddy on their Economy package. I believe it's shared hosting.

                      With that being said, unfortunately I don't have access to the server config. How would I go about implementing a 301 redirect for the other domain or even better a 404?

                      I absolutely agree about modifying the htaccess. As it stands now, I've hacked it together, but I'll see if I can find out how to do what you're suggesting.

                      I appreciate your feedback so far.

                      Best regards

                      Highland 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Highland
                        Highland last edited by

                        That sounds like a bad web server config. Most servers run a virtual host, meaning the URL determines what website is served up. Either you have your own virtual dedicated server and only one site that isn't using vhost, or your host has set your website up as the default site.

                        If you have control over the web server config, I would add the malicious site to the config as a hosted site and then have it return a 404. That should de-index it.

                        If you don't have that level of control, try to get a 301 redirect for the bad domain. You really need  something like an htaccess that says if a site is accessing my website as anything but www.mydomain.com it needs to 301 to that URL. Otherwise anyone in the world can hijack your site the way it's set up now. Just point another A record and instant duplicate content headaches.

                        FranGen 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • MJTrevens

                          Can Google Crawl & Index my Schema in CSR JavaScript

                          We currently only have one option for implementing our Schema. It is populated in the JSON which is rendered by JavaScript on the CLIENT side. I've heard tons of mixed reviews about if this will work or not. So, does anyone know for sure if this will or will not work. Also, how can I build a test to see if it does or does not work?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens
                          0
                        • MattBassos

                          What IP Address does Googlebot use to read your site when coming from an external backlink?

                          Hi All, I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink. I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website? E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address. Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain? Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc. If anyone has any insight this would be great.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBassos
                          0
                        • odihost

                          Google does not want to index my page

                          I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost
                          0
                        • ioannisa

                          Mass Removal Request from Google Index

                          Hi, I am trying to cleanse a news website.  When this website was first made, the people that set it up copied all kinds of articles they had as a newspaper, including tests, internal communication, and drafts.  This site has lots of junk, but this kind of junk was on the initial backup, aka before 1st-June-2012.  So, removing all mixed content prior to that date, we can have pure articles starting June 1st, 2012! Therefore My dynamic sitemap now contains only articles with release date between 1st-June-2012 and now Any article that has release date prior to 1st-June-2012 returns a custom 404 page with "noindex" metatag, instead of the actual content of the article. The question is how I can remove from the google index all this junk as fast as possible that is not on the site anymore, but still appears in google results? I know that for individual URLs I need to request removal from this link
                          https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals The problem is doing this in bulk, as there are tens of thousands of URLs I want to remove.  Should I put the articles back to the sitemap so the search engines crawl the sitemap and see all the 404?  I believe this is very wrong.  As far as I know this will cause problems because search engines will try to access non existent content that is declared as existent by the sitemap, and return errors on the webmasters tools. Should I submit a DELETED ITEMS SITEMAP using the <expires>tag? I think this is for custom search engines only, and not for the generic google search engine.
                          https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/indexing#on-demand-indexing</expires> The site unfortunatelly doesn't use any kind of "folder" hierarchy in its URLs, but instead the ugly GET params, and a kind of folder based pattern is impossible since all articles (removed junk and actual articles) are of the form:
                          http://www.example.com/docid=123456 So, how can I bulk remove from the google index all the junk... relatively fast?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ioannisa
                          0
                        • EcommRulz

                          Does Google Index URLs that are always 302 redirected

                          Hello community Due to the architecture of our site, we have a bunch of URLs that are 302 redirected to the same URL plus a query string appended to it. For example: www.example.com/hello.html is 302 redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc The www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc page also has a link canonical tag to www.example.com/hello.html In the above example, can www.example.com/hello.html every be Indexed, by google as I assume the googlebot will always be redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc and will never see www.example.com/hello.html ? Thanks in advance for the help!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommRulz
                          0
                        • djlittman

                          If I own a .com url and also have the same url with .net, .info, .org, will I want to point them to the .com IP address?

                          I have a domain, for example, mydomain.com and I purchased mydomain.net, mydomain.info, and mydomain.org.  Should I point the host @ to the IP where the .com is hosted in wpengine? I am not doing anything with the .org, .info, .net domains.  I simply purchased them to prevent competitors from buying the domains.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlittman
                          0
                        • danng

                          XML Sitemap Index Percentage (Large Sites)

                          Hi all I'm wanting to find out from those who have experience dealing with large sites (10s/100s of millions of pages). What's a typical (or highest) percentage of indexed pages vs. submitted pages you've seen? This information can be found in webmaster tools where Google shows you the pages submitted & indexed for each of your sitemap. I'm trying to figure out whether, The average index % out there There is a ceiling (i.e. will never reach 100%) It's possible to improve the indexing percentage further Just to give you some background, sitemap index files (according to schema.org) have been implemented to improve crawl efficiency and I'm wanting to find out other ways to improve this further. I've been thinking about looking at the URL parameters to exclude as there are hundreds (e-commerce site) to help Google improve crawl efficiency and utilise the daily crawl quote more effectively to discover pages that have not been discovered yet. However, I'm not sure yet whether this is the best path to take or I'm just flogging a dead horse if there is such a ceiling or if I'm already at the average ballpark for large sites. Any suggestions/insights would be appreciated. Thanks.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danng
                          0
                        • RichardTaylor

                          So What On My Site Is Breaking The Google Guidelines?

                          I have a site that I'm trying to rank for the Keyword "Jigsaw Puzzles" I was originally ranked around #60 or something around there and then all of a sudden my site stopped ranking for that keyword. (My other keyword rankings stayed) Contacted Google via the site reconsideration and got the general response... So I went through and deleted as many links as I could find that I thought Google may not have liked... heck, I even removed links that I don't think I should have JUST so I could have this fixed. I responded with a list of all links I removed and also any links that I've tried to remove, but couldn't for whatever reasons. They are STILL saying my website is breaking the Google guidelines... mainly around links. Can anyone take a peek at my site and see if there's anything on the site that may be breaking the guidelines? (because I can't) Website in question: http://www.yourjigsawpuzzles.co.uk UPDATE: Just to let everyone know that after multiple reconsideration requests, this penalty has been removed. They stated it was a manual penalty. I tried removing numerous different types of links but they kept saying no, it's still breaking rules. It wasn't until I removed some website directory links that they removed this manual penalty. Thought it would be interesting for some of you guys.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTaylor
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.