URL Index Removal for Hacked Website - Will this help?
-
My main question is: How do we remove URLs (links) from Google's index and the 1000s of created 404 errors associated with them after a website was hacked (and now fixed)?
The story: A customer came to us for a new website and some SEO. They had an existing website that had been hacked and their previous vendor was non-responsive to address the issue for months. This created THOUSANDS of URLs on their website that were then linked to pornographic and prescription med SPAM sites. Now, Google has 1,205 pages indexed that create 404 errors on the new site. I am confident these links are causing Google to not rank well organically.
Additional information:
- Entirely new website
- Wordpress site
- New host
Should we be using the "Remove URLs" tool from Google to submit all 1205 of these pages? Do you think it will make a difference? This is down from the 22,500 URLs that existed when we started a few months back. Thank you in advance for any tips or suggestions!
-
Yes.
Disavow needed for each site (http/https).
-
Thanks for clearing this out.
If i have spammy links on http version, but my site is now https, i should upload the same disavow list on both http and https? (i saw one answer of yours in other thread saying just that , and i think is important because many of us are missing this detail) -
If they are not your - it's better to disavow them. If they are spammy - disavow them.
Those links may hurt your ranking.
-
Hi Pete, something in your answer got my attention.
Like one month ago , i saw some (as was proven later) spammy links pointing to one specific page of my site. Those links ( from 20+ domains) were coming from some german domain names with the ltd .xyz extension.
Now the links don't actually exists, but those referring pages saying 410 Gone (nginx server).
Is that bad for that spesific page of mine?
I never saw in past this http status. -
If your "bad" link is like http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html then your .htaccess should be:
Redirect 410 /flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html
that's all.Yes - you should do this for ALL 1205 URLs. Don't do this on legal pages (before hacking), just on hacked pages. I say "gone" with 410 redirect. It's amazing. In your case gone for good. Time for identify that 1205 URLs and paste them into .htaccess is let's say X hours. Time for identify that 1205 URLs and temporary remove them is Y hours. Since "temporary removal" is up to 30 days this make same job each month. In total for one year you have X in first case and 12*Y in second case. You can see difference, right?
Also today Barry Adams release story about hacking:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/website-hacked-manual-penalty-google/
and it's amazing that site was hacked just for 4 hours but Google notice this. You can see there traffic drop and removal from SERP. Ok, i'm not trying to "fear sells", but keeping bad pages with 404 will take long time. In Jan-Feb 2012 i have new temporary site on mine site within /us/ folder and even today Jan 2016 i still receiving bots crawling this folder. That's why i nuke it with 410. This save the day!On your case it's same. Bot is wasting time and resources to crawl 404 pages over and over but crawling less your important pages. That's why it's good to nuke them. ONLY them. This will save bot crawling budget on your website. So bot can focus on your pages.
-
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your response! I saw you answered a similar question about a week ago, so thank you for weighing in on my options. So, to clarify, I must do this for all 1,205 of the URLs?
One SPAM link is pointing here: http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html so in your above example, this would look like:
Redirect 410 /dir/http://OURDOMAIN/flibzy/foto-bugil-di-kelas.html/ (?) and do this for each page that Google has indexed?
I saw your example with the iphone on the other post. How did you get that page to say, GONE - The requested resource...
-
The best is to keep them 404. But fast is to 410 them.
All you need is to place this topmost somewhere of .htaccess:
Redirect 410 /dir/url1/
Redirect 410 /dir/url2/
Redirect 410 /dir1/url3/
Redirect 410 /dir1/url4/But this won't help you if your URLs have parameters somewhere like index.php?spamword1-blah-blah. For this you need extended version like this:
RewriteEngine on
#RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword
RewriteRule ^(.)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword1
RewriteRule ^(.)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} spamword2
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /404.html? [R=410,L]So why 410? 410 act much faster than 404 but it's DANGEROUS! If you sent 410 to normal URL this is effective nuking it. I found that with 410 bot visit this url 1-2-3 times, but with 404 bot keep visiting over and over eating your crawling budget. URL removal in SearchConsole is OK, but it's fast but works only for 30 days. And will eat almost same time as building list for 404/410s. Hint: You can speedup crawling if you do "fetch and render" then submit to index.
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?
Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP1 -
Should I switch my website builder/host? Please help.
My website: www.joeborders.com is hosted with a service called jigsy: www.jigsy.com. I'm losing my mind trying to figure out if I should stay or not. Lol. I am positive I have done waaaayyy more work on my seo than many people ranking above me. I used to be on the first page, but over the last year I've slowly dropped in rankings. I've checked everything! I need to do some work on my blog, but I'm really thinking now that it might have something to do with my host. Some concerns I've identified: 1) I can't give pages individual h1 tags. The same one is blanketed across the site. 2) I'm told there are a lot of .css and JavaScript. 3) i cant redirect blog posts.....so moz is tagging me with 250 critical issues because my posts are on both www and http versions of my site .But that's all I know. I've talked with squarespace and WordPress and they have no way of transferring my site. It would probably take me a good 30 hours to set everything up....should i move? Please help 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joebordersmft0 -
How would you address these URLS
Hey Mozzers, long time no post. Just a quick one for you regarding URLS, this is an example of a url on a site https://www.thisismyurl.co.uk/products/spacehoppers/special-spacehopper.html Many of these pages are getting flagged for having a url that is too long. The target of this page is "special spacehoppers". Should i be concerned with the url being to long given my keyword is at the end? Would this be a suitable idea? https://www.thisismyurl.co.uk/p/spacehoppers/special.html Would changing products to p be worthwhile? It would remove length from nearly all urls but would require a site wide re-direct. 2)Would removing the "spacehoppers" bit from the url be worth it? Yes it would shorten the url but would also remove the exact keyword from the url which could be detrimental to rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP0 -
Website Does not index in any page?
I created a website www.astrologersktantrik.com 4 days ago and fetch it with google but still my website does not index on google as the keywords I use is with low competition but still my website does not appear on any keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ramansaab0 -
Expired urls
For a large jobs site, what would be the best way to handle job adverts that are no longer available? Ideas that I have include: Keep the url live with the original content and display current similar job vacancies below - this has the advantage of continually growing the number of indexed pages. 301 redirect old pages to parent categories - this has the advantage of concentrating any acquired link juice where it is most needed. Your thoughts much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Volusion store product pages will not index
Hello, I have moved over to Volusion and was wondering if you guys know of any SEO practices that are Volusion specific. i have been working on this site now for 2 months and my impressions and rankings have dropped substantially My 301 redirects where in place before I flipped over and my keywords / titles/ tags etc.. are in place. However i am still not making any progress in the engines. I have noticed that my products are not being indexed per Webmaster tools. I have heard that volusion has something set up to where you must purchase their SEO package in order to rank. I am really at my wits end and currently I thinking about taking a loss and reverting back to my old Shoppe Pro site. Any help would be very appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kerry0217
.0 -
To index or not to index search pages - (Panda related)
Hi Mozzers I have a WordPress site with Relevanssi the search engine plugin, free version. Questions: Should I let Google index my site's SERPS? I am scared the page quality is to thin, and then Panda bear will get angry. This plugin (or my previous search engine plugin) created many of these "no-results" uris: /?s=no-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Akids+wall&cat=no-results&pg=6 I have added a robots.txt rule to disallow these pages and did a GWT URL removal request. But links to these pages are still being displayed in Google's SERPS under "repeat the search with the omitted results included" results. So will this affect me negatively or are these results harmless? What exactly is an omitted result? As I understand it is that Google found a link to a page they but can't display it because I block GoogleBot. Thanx in advance guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClassifiedsKing0