Unable to Get Back to Performance Levels Six Months After Attack
-
We work on a fine art site. In May we were attacked and blocked by Google for about 12hrs until we cleared all affected pages and files. Our response was pretty fast, and to be fair, so was Google's action to unblock us.
However, shortly afterwards, the entire site's page rank disappeared, it never came back. I also believe people are now speculating that Google's PR updates are either overdue or have stopped, so I can't gauge PR at all.
One way we can gauge potential for position is that we remain top 1-6 in Bing for most terms. Moz authority reflects this as well. An example:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?rls=en&q=doug+hyde+prints
These are the types of position we occupied on Google prior to the drop. We've been told there are no manual actions against us, nevertheless we've worked to clean out any duplicate content and disavow some link trawling/people directory sites that duplicated a lot of our content. Page code has been cleaned up, pages optimised, loading times reduced where possible etc. etc..
This chap seems to have had similar issues back in 2011: http://moz.com/community/q/not-ranking-well-after-site-was-hacked
Any input/experience gratefully received. Working our wotsits off to generate traffic off no PR and Adwords at the moment and it's a struggle. I've actually got new sites to rank faster and better than this in 3 months, so this is one big penalty.
Roland
-
A few points.
1. Make absolute sure your site is clear of Malware. Check Google Webmaster Tools and I also recommend running your URL through the Securi checker (the scan is free, and the service is worth it if you were hit)
2. After a malware hit, Google recommends you use the "Crawl as Googlebot" in Google Webmaster Tools and then select "Submit this page and all linked pages to Index" option.
3. Make sure your sitemaps are up to date and properly submitted via Google Webmaster Tools.
4. I did notice in your question that you disavowed links. If you disavowed links that were actually helping you this could have had a negative effect on your rankings. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to get these back.
It's possible your drop has nothing to do with the Malware - it could be just an unfortunate coincidence. Do a site audit, check your crawl errors, try to match your traffic drop against known Google updates, and stay vigilant about improving your content and outreach.
No definite answers here, but I hope this background helps. Best of luck with your site!
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
-
Unable to site crawl
Hi there, our website was revamped last year and Moz is unable to crawl the site since then. Could you please check what is the issue? @siteaudits @Crawlinfo gleneagles.com.my
Technical SEO | | helensohdg380 -
Can a page that's 301 redirected get indexed / show in search results?
Hey folks, have searched around and haven't been able to find an answer to this question. I've got a client who has very different search results when including his middle initial. His bio page on his company's website has the slug /people/john-smith; I'm wondering if we set up a duplicate bio page with his middle initial (e.g. /people/john-b-smith) and then 301 redirect it to the existent bio page, whether the latter page would get indexed by google and show in search results for queries that use the middle initial (e.g. "john b smith"). I've already got the metadata based on the middle initial version but I know the slug is a ranking signal and since it's a direct match to one of his higher volume branded queries I thought it might help to get his bio page ranking more highly. Would that work or does the 301'd page effectively cease to exist in Google's eyes?
Technical SEO | | Greentarget0 -
What to do about removing pages for the 'offseason' (IE the same URL will be brought back in 6-7 months)?
I manage a site for an event that runs annually, and now that the event has concluded we would like to remove some of the pages (schedule, event info, TV schedule, etc.) that won't be relevant again until next year's event. That said, if we simply remove those pages from the web, I'm afraid that we'll lose out on valuable backlinks that already exist, and when those pages return they will have the same URLs as before. Is there a best course of action here? Should I redirect the removed pages to the homepage for the time being using a 302? Is there any risk there if the 'temporary' period is ~7 months? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | KTY550 -
Why Custom Post Types Don't Get Ranked Well
So I have started to use custom post types and have noticed that they don't get ranked very well in Google. On the other hand a post will rank almost immediately. Does anyone know any tricks for making custom post types rank as well as posts in wordpress? Sincerely, Garret
Technical SEO | | eWebify0 -
What can i do to get google to visit my site more often
Hi, i am having serious problems since i upgraded my website from joomla 1.5 to 3.0 We have dropped down the rankings from page one for the word lifestyle magazine, and we have dropped down in rankings for other very important words including gastric band hypnotherapy and i am starting to regret having the site upgraded. i am finding the google is taking its time visiting my site, i know this for two reasons, one i have checked the cache and it is showing the 2nd july and i have checked articles that we have written and they are still not showing. example if i put this article name in word for word it does not come up, Carnival Divert Ships In The Caribbean Due To bad Weather this was an article that was done yesterday. in the old days before the upgrade that would have been in google now. these problems are costing us the loss of a great deal of traffic, we are losing around 70% of our traffic since the upgrade and would be grateful if people could give me advice on how to turn things around. we add articles all the time. each day we add a number of articles, i was considering changing the front page in the middle and having a few paragraphs of the latest story to get google to visit more often. i know this would look messy but i am running out of ideas. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Keep getting random broken links pointed at our website
Over the past 6 months I've noticed an increase of 404 errors being picked up by Google Webmaster Tools. When I look at the errors table and review these errors the links are invariable made up likes being generated from what looks like scraper sites or sites with search results embedded into them. Below are some examples of them. Broken Link URL Generating the Link www.mysite.com/rwickenhauser http://www.webstatsdomain.com
Technical SEO | | adamlcasey
www.mysite.com/guest http://www.webstatsdomain.com
www.mysite.com/windows http://www.webstatsdomain.com
www.mysite.com/..app http://213.174.143.40/
www.mysite.com/ht.. http://de.aguea.com/ None of these pages exist on our website.
So do I need to setup redirects for these or can they be ignored?0 -
Getting more pages indexed by yahoo and bing
Anyone has a reliable way to get more pages indexed in yahoo and bing. Please dont say to get more inner page quality links.
Technical SEO | | mickey110 -
Why are my pages getting duplicate content errors?
Studying the Duplicate Page Content report reveals that all (or many) of my pages are getting flagged as having duplicate content because the crawler thinks there are two versions of the same page: http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/audio.aspx http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/Audio.aspx The only difference is the capitalization. We don't have two versions of the page so I don't understand what I'm missing or how to correct this. Anyone have any thoughts for what to look for?
Technical SEO | | jkenyon0