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
-
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
-
Yes, sorry, Fetch as Google: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=158587
-
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.
-
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.
-
Nope, it doesn't. I guess it's just a waiting game at this point. Thank you again.
-
Does it still resolve to your site? If not, it should fall off as Google spiders it again.
-
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?
-
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] -
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
-
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.
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
-
My product category pages are not being indexed on google can someone help?
My website has been indexed on google and all of its pages can be found on google except for the product category pages - which are where we want our traffic heading to, so this is a big problem for us. Our website is www.skirtinguk.com And an example of a page that isn't being indexed is https://www.skirtinguk.com/product-category/mdf-skirting-board/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chelseaskirtinguk0 -
How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Why Google isn't indexing my images?
Hello, on my fairly new website Worthminer.com I am noticing that Google is not indexing images from my sitemap. Already 560 images submitted and Google indexed only 3 of them. Altough there is more images indexed they are not indexing any new images, and I have no idea why. Posts, categories and other urls are indexing just fine, but images not. I am using Wordpress and for sitemaps Wordpress SEO by yoast. Am I missing something here? Why Google won't index my images? Thanks, I appreciate any help, David xv1GtwK.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Worthminer1 -
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
Hi All, I recently started using Google Alerts more and more and while sites I support never appear there (not surprising) I recently noticed few very poor and low quality sites that do. This site for example appears quite a bit in its niche. So to my questions... What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
How to get content to index faster in Google.....pubsubhubbub?
I'm curious to know what tools others are using to get their content to index faster (other than html sitmap and pingomatic, twitter, etc) Would installing the wordpress pubsubhubbub plugin help even though it uses pingomatic? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
In performing a link: to my site, I found this: Video Of People Using Viagra - Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping <cite>www.planetherbs.com/affiliate-program.html</cite> - Cached -Block all www.planetherbs.com results1 day ago – Video Of People Using Viagra. Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping. Check Order Status. Natural and healthy products! If you go to that url, you will see it's just an affiliate program page. Some viagra spammer somehow changed the title and description metatags that google sees (not actually) and links from what appears to be spammy pages are pointing to me. I don't want to get dinged for this. How do I fix these for myself and planetherbs.com? And how did the spammer do this???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KatMouse0 -
Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0