undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Technical SEO
  4. Google Webmaster Tools - content keywords containing spam?

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.

Google Webmaster Tools - content keywords containing spam?

Technical SEO
6
8
1.7k
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.
  • Henrik_Kruse
    Henrik_Kruse last edited by May 12, 2015, 11:11 AM

    Hi all,

    When I looked in Google Webmaster Tools today I found under the menu Google Index, Content Keywords, that the list is full of spammy keywords (E.g. Viagra (no. 1) and stuff like that)

    Around april we built a whole new website, uploaded a new xml-sitemap, and did all the other things Google Webmaster Tools suggest when one is creating a Google Webmaster Account.

    Under the menu "Security Issues" nothing is mentioned.

    All together I find it har d to believe that the site is hacked - so WHY is Google finding these content keywords on our site??

    Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts?

    Best regards,

    Christian

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Snoogle
      Snoogle last edited by May 29, 2015, 12:44 PM May 29, 2015, 12:44 PM

      I've encountered the same issue on clients websites before. They had a wordpress site and as it turned out a hidden virus - that was showing different results to Google, than to users. So the virus couldn't be detected.

      I ended up using this WP Plugin " Anti-Malware & Brute Force Security" to scan enter website. It should vulnerable files - which were removed everything cleaned up.

      And as previous posters mentioned, Google/Sucuri may not see the malware know but when they do you're at risk of the site being blacklisted - so best to take care of it now.

      hope that helps

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,10 days
      • Christy-Correll
        Christy-Correll Staff last edited by May 19, 2015, 3:51 PM May 19, 2015, 3:51 PM

        Hi Henrik,

        Has this issue been resolved? We'd love an update! Thanks. 🙂

        Christy

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DirkC
          DirkC last edited by May 12, 2015, 7:08 PM May 12, 2015, 7:08 PM

          Hi,

          In the Search Analytics report could you put the filter on "Pages" rather than "Keywords" - and check if there are pages listed that seem suspicious to you?

          Did you try "spammy keyword" site:yoursite.com in Google?

          Recently there where quite some questions about wordpress sites that had been hacked - mainly caused by this vulnerability:

          https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/slider-revolution-plugin-critical-vulnerability-being-exploited.html

          or this one https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/12/revslider-vulnerability-leads-to-massive-wordpress-soaksoak-compromise.html

          I guess that sucuri would normally detect this - but maybe you could doublecheck that you're not using these kind of slider on your site.

          rgds,

          Dirk

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • Henrik_Kruse
            Henrik_Kruse @LauraSultan last edited by May 12, 2015, 4:52 PM May 12, 2015, 4:52 PM

            Hi Laura,

            Thank you for your answer.

            • No comment spam.

            • No malware found using Sucuri

            • No problems found using site:example.com

            (and the above is the reason why I am a surprised - I have never seen this before)

            So ony reason I can think of is the old site was spammed/hacked and the new site is not...?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Henrik_Kruse
              Henrik_Kruse @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by May 12, 2015, 4:45 PM May 12, 2015, 4:45 PM

              Hi Andy,

              Thank you for your answer.

              The site is build in Wordpress.

              I have sent you a PM with my website (couldn't find your name, so I pm'ed iq SEO)

              Best regards

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • LauraSultan
                LauraSultan last edited by May 12, 2015, 11:57 AM May 12, 2015, 11:57 AM

                Here's what I would look for:

                • Comment spam - Do you have any visible comment spam on your website that includes these types of keywords? If so, remove it all.
                • Malware - Some types of malware will create new pages on your site that you can't access through a simple crawl from your home page. Search "site:example.com" in Google, replacing "example.com" with your domain name. Go through all of the results to see if Google has any pages indexed for your site that you don't recognize.

                Even if Google doesn't flag your site for malware, it may still be there. Look at the files on the server to see if there are new files that shouldn't be there. Scan your site at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ to see if anything comes up there.

                If your site is infected with malware, Google will eventually find it and flag your site. Yes, it will certainly harm your SEO efforts.

                Henrik_Kruse 1 Reply Last reply May 12, 2015, 4:52 PM Reply Quote 1
                • Andy.Drinkwater
                  Andy.Drinkwater last edited by May 12, 2015, 11:39 AM May 12, 2015, 11:39 AM

                  Hi Christian,

                  It's a little difficult to say what might be going on without being able to actually see the site. You are welcome to PM me this or post it here and I will gladly take a look for you.

                  Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts? It all depends. If your site has indeed been hacked, you need to find out what has happened (and how it happened). What did you build the site in?

                  -Andy

                  Henrik_Kruse 1 Reply Last reply May 12, 2015, 4:45 PM Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    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

                  • Extima-Christian

                    Sitemap error in Webmaster tools - 409 error (conflict)

                    Hey guys, I'm getting this weird error when I submit my sitemap to Google. It says I'm getting a 409 error in my post-sitemap.xml file (https://cleargear.com/post-sitemap.xml). But when I check it, it looks totally fine. I am using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap.xml file. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a big deal? If so, Does anyone know how to fix? Thanks EwTswL4

                    Technical SEO | Dec 3, 2018, 10:56 AM | Extima-Christian
                    0
                  • jgresalfi

                    If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?

                    I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!

                    Technical SEO | Dec 3, 2017, 12:49 AM | jgresalfi
                    0
                  • DigitalCRO

                    Content in Accordion doesn't rank as well as Content in Text box?

                    Does content rank better in a full view text layout, rather than in a clickable accordion? I read somewhere because users need to click into an accordion it may not rank as well, as it may be considered hidden on the page - is this true? accordion example: see features: https://www.workday.com/en-us/applications/student.html

                    Technical SEO | Aug 24, 2017, 2:52 PM | DigitalCRO
                    1
                  • Jane.com

                    Will Google crawl and rank our ReactJS website content?

                    We have 250+ products dynamically inserted and sorted on our site daily (more specifically our homepage... yes, it's a long page). Our dev team would like to explore rendering the page server-side using ReactJS. We currently use a CDN to cache all the content, which of course we would like to continue using. SO... will Google be able to crawl that content? We've read some articles with different ideas (including prerendering): http://andrewhfarmer.com/react-seo/
                    http://www.seoskeptic.com/json-ld-big-day-at-google/ If we were to only load the schema important to the page  (like product title, image, price, description, etc.) from the server and then let the client render the remaining content (comments, suggested products, etc.), would that go against best practices? It seems like that might be seen as showing the googlebot 1 version and showing the site visitor a different (more complete) version.

                    Technical SEO | May 24, 2016, 8:33 AM | Jane.com
                    0
                  • Dynata_panel_marketing

                    Bing webmaster tools incorrectly showing missing title and description tags

                    Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman

                    Technical SEO | May 3, 2016, 3:26 PM | Dynata_panel_marketing
                    0
                  • healthgrades

                    How can I find my Webmaster Tools HTML file?

                    So, totally amateur hour here, but I can't for the life of me find our HTML verification file for webmaster tools. I see nowhere to look at it in Google Webmaster Tools console, I tried a site:, I googled it, all the info out there is about how to verify a site. Ours is verified, but I need the verification file code to sync up with the Google API and no one seems to have it. Any thoughts?

                    Technical SEO | Nov 8, 2012, 7:15 PM | healthgrades
                    0
                  • jackaveli

                    How often should I upload a new sitemap in google webmasters?

                    So I have a real estate website that is regularly changing listings, photos, data.  Every time a new listing is added it creates a page for that listing. My question is how frequently should I be recreating a new xml sitemap and uploading it to google webmasters? Thanks in advance.

                    Technical SEO | Oct 9, 2012, 12:11 PM | jackaveli
                    0
                  • EugeneF

                    Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical

                    We are doing a "soft migration" of a website.  (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days.  These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site.  Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's.   Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?

                    Technical SEO | May 5, 2012, 11:42 PM | EugeneF
                    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.