Site was infected with spam webmaster tools still reporting it
-
I have recently been working with a site that was hacked. It suffered from a pharma injection into Joomla. The site has been cleaned for several months, but WMT is still reporting "pharmacy" as occuring 421 times. The url it gives reports a 500 error. I also removed it in Google. Can this still be hurting the site? How can I clean this up?
-
Hi John,
Question: When you say WMT reports 421 instances of "pharmacy" - where do they report this? In your inbound anchor text, content keywords, or somewhere else?
Also, does Google report any malware on your site? I couldn't tell from the question.
Regardless, if you're unsure about any lingering hack, I'd use a tool like Securi to do a site check. If you're site is indeed clean, I wouldn't worry too much about the latent data in Webmaster Tools. But if you're site was infected for a long time, you can try filing a reconsideration request which might prompt a set of human Google eyeballs on the site. If you site is clean, you can also perform a "crawl as google" and submit all linked pages to the index.
Hope this helps! Best of luck.
-
Hi John,
I agree with Martijn. A client's website suffered from Malware infection a couple of weeks ago. As a result GWT reported a Malware infection on the site aswell as all search results on Google are marked with a note that this website is infected.
After I cleaned the website up, I went back to GWT and clicked on the error message. I marked all errors as fixed. This tells Google to check your website ASAP. Just fyi: ASAP is in this case a definition which can't be precise as it's up to Google.
Anyway, I think the reason why it takes so long for you ould be:
- You still have infected files. Make sure your website is really clean!
- Your website is clean by the crawling algorythm is very long so it takes ages until you get rid of the error message. Best solution here: Mark your errors as fixed.
Hope this makes it for you.
-
Hi John,
Overall my experience is that Google Webmaster Tools is sometimes really slow with refreshing the data and mostly when your problems occurred a couple of months ago. You could try to mark the items as fixed in GWT, this sometimes makes it easier to see new errors.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Webmaster Tools Search Queries Data Drop
Hi I'm seeing a significant drop in search queries being reported for a client in GWT starting on the 7th Feb. I have seen a few articles on SERound Table etc saying that many are reporting probs like delays etc with GWT updating its data, such as these ones: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-webmaster-tools-data-stalled-19854.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-webmaster-tools-analytics-data-19870.html However these seem to suggest the problem is simply a delay with displayed data being updated, in the case im looking at the data is up to date but showing an increasing decline. When i look at Analytics data though the data is completely different. For exmaple GWT says on the 21st Feb there were 23 impressions with zero clicks but Analytics says there were 6 clicks/sessions from organic search. I take it this means that there is a likely problem with GWT data and I shouldn't worry ? All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Open Site Explorer - Link Data still not available
Hi, I still cant get access to any data for the URL www.attraction-tickets-direct.co.uk/walt-disney-world-orlando-tickets We changed this URL over two month ago and your site explains that it takes up to this amount of time to start getting data. This is really annoying as we would like this information for us to do a competitor anaylsis. Any idea when we should start recieving this? thanks
Technical SEO | | SEOConrad0 -
Should we redirect 404 errrors seen in webmaster tools with ... (dot.dot,dot) ?
Lately I have seen lots of 404 errors showing in webmaster tools that are not really links. Many of them from shammy pages. (I did not put them there) One of the most common types is ones that show the link ending in ... ( dot, dot, dot) The appearance of the link is being sent from pages like this http://www.the-pick.com/00_fahrenheit,2.html For example a link like this would show up in webmaster tools as a 404 error. http://www.ehow.com/how_2352088_easily-... Are these worth redirecting? So far I have redirected some of them and found that is was not helpful and possibly harmful. Anyone else had the same experience? Also getting lots of partial urls showing up from pages that reference my site but the url is cut off and the link is not active. Does Google really count these as links? Is redirecting a link from a spammy page acknowledging acceptance and could it count against you?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Want to Target Mobile site for Google Mobile Version and Desktop Site for Google Desktop Version
I have ecommerce site with both mobile version and desktop version. Mobile version starts with m.example.com and full version starts with www.example.com I am using same content through out both site and using 301 redirection by detecting user agent vice-versa. My both sites are accessible to crawl by any google spider. I have submitted both sites's sitemap to GWT and mobile site having mobile sitemap xml, so google can easily recognize my mobile site. Is it going to help to rank my both sites as per my expectation? I need to rank for mobile site in Google mobile and ranking for desktop site in Google desktop version. Some of pages of my mobile site are started to appearing in Google desktop version. So how I can stop them to appear in Google desktop? Your comments are highly welcome.
Technical SEO | | Hexpress0 -
Will training videos available on the "members only" section of a site contribute to the sites ranking?
Hello, I got asked a question recently as to whether training videos on the deeper pages of a website (that you can only access if you are a member and log in) will help with the sites ranking. On the SEOMoz software these deeper pages have been crawled as far as I can tell with errors reported on pages from the "members only" section of the site, leading me to believe the members only pages and their content will contribute to the sites overall ranking profile. I have suggested uploading the informational videos on the main pages of the site for now, making them accessible to all visitors and putting them in a more obvious place to encourage more sharing and views, however I've also said I would check it out with some experts so any information will be greatly appreciated! Many thanks 🙂 Charlotte
Technical SEO | | CharlotteWaller0 -
Spam Backlinks to My Website
today i have created inbound link report using Link Research & Analysis tool and i found that there are number of spam inbound link to my website from lots of blogs and other sites Which anchor text are not relevant to my site. It contain some abusive words in anchor text like "viagra expiration date" and other. I want remove these irrelevant backlinks. As there are very high number of links approx 9000, its almost impossible to remove the links manually. Is there any way to remove and restrict those backlink? Whats steps required to protect any negative affect to my website? Please advice asap.
Technical SEO | | saupari0 -
What are the pros and cons of moving one site onto a subdomain of another site?
Two sites. One has weaker sales. What would the benefits and problems for SEO of moving the weak site from its own domain to a subdomain of the stronger site?
Technical SEO | | GriffinHansen0