Site Hack In Meta Description
-
Hey MOZ Community,
I am looking for some help in identifying where the following meta description is coming from on this home page - https://www.apins.com. I have scrubbed through the page source without being able to locate where the content is being pulled from. The website is built on WordPress and metas were updated using Yoast, but I am wondering if an installed plugin could be the culprit. On top of this, I have had a developer take a look for the "hack" and they have assured that the issue has been removed. I have submitted the URL in GSC a couple of times to be re-indexed but have not had much luck.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated, the displayed description is below.
The health screening plays http://buyviagraonlineccm.com/ a significant and key role in detecting potentially life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart ...
-
Google will often make up its own mind what to put in your description, especially if it thinks that your provided description doesn't match what it thinks the page is about.
I'm afraid your developer hasn't fixed the issue. I was looking in the wrong place (your screenshot identified the issue), the malware isn't replacing the meta description, but actually inserting text at the top of the page, but only when it detects that it is the Mobile Googlebot visiting.
Using Google Chrome Developer Tools you can set your user agent and see the issue yourself (See my screenshot)
If I were you, I'd disable all the plugins and then reload the page in Chrome with your user agent set and see if that helps, if not, I would look at your theme's JS/source files.
-
Thanks Alex,
Appreciate the look through. Speaking from memory, but I believe the problem was removed around the 20th of January 2019. I have been manually requesting the indexing of the page in GSC every two weeks since that point, so as much as I would like it to be a waiting game, I have a feeling there is still an error and that leads to my next point.
Great suggestion on retaking a look at URL inspection tool. When I used the tool previously, I did not tab over to the "screenshot" mode, and that seems to be where this is all coming from. Take a look at my screenshot. The page is full of copy that matches up to that spammy meta description. My next two questions would be, how could this be overwriting my descriptions when I don't see any of this on the live site or in the page source? Additionally, there have been no security reports in our GSC account, is that normal?
-
I can't see anything obvious. I did wonder whether it might be a script that only replaced the description when it was crawled by Google but I can't see any evidence of this.
If your developer is suggesting that they have removed the issue, I assume they did find a problem and have corrected it. When was it corrected? It may well just be a case of Google taking some time to update the index. You could check this in Search Console, use the URL Inspection and do a Live Test and then View Tested Page, check the source to see if the description is as expected.
If it is, I think it is likely just a case of waiting, given that you have already requested reindexing.
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
-
Messy older site
I am taking over a website that doesn't have any canonical tags and spotty redirects. It looks like they have http://, https://, www and non-www pages indexed but GA is just set up for the http://non-www home page. Should all versions of the site be set up in GA and Search Console? I think so but wanted to confirm. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | SpodekandCo0 -
Phone Number In Meta Description
People are more likely to call us, than email us. However, if they're using a mobile device, there's a click to call button on that site. My question is this: google does not include our phone number in our meta description. I could try to get the description changed, but it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a deal for just the desktop site. Am I missing something about the importance of the phone number on a desktop site? Any experience with this situation? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup3 -
Meta Description VS Rich Snippets
Hello everyone, I have one question: there is a way to tell Google to take the meta description for the search results instead of the rich snippets? I already read some posts here in moz, but no answer was found. In the post was said that if you have keywords in the meta google may take this information instead, but it's not like this as i have keywords in the meta tags. The fact is that, in this way, the descriptions are not compelling at all, as they were intended to be. If it's not worth for ranking, so why google does not allow at least to have it's own website descriptions in their search results? I undestand that spam issues may be an answer, but in this way it penalizes also not spammy websites that may convert more if with a much more compelling description than the snippets. What do you think? and there is any way to fix this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | socialengaged
Eugenio0 -
Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS
I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive. It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile. Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product. My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content? Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
Shutting down a site, where do I 301 it?
I'm working with a few international sites that we are going to collapse into one main site. Our current plan is to 301 the 4 other sites into our main site home page. Is this ok? Is there a better way to do this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
How a google bot sees your site
So I have stumbled across various websites like this: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/googlebot-spoofer/ The concept here is to be able to view your site as a googlebot sees it. However, the results are a little puzzling. Google is reading the text on my page but not the title tags according to the results. Are websites like this accurate OR does Google not read title tags and H1 tags anymore? Also on a slighly related note. I noticed the results show the navigation bar is being read first by google, is this bad and should the navigation bar be optimized for keywords as well? If it did, it would read a bit funny and the "humans" would be confused.
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Adding more content to an old site
We have a site which was de-moted from PR4 to PR3 with the latest Google update. We have not done any SEO for a long time for the site and the content is the same with over 100 page. My question is, in order to update the site, which is the best to do it, do we: 1. re-introduced new content to replace old once 2. re-write old content 3. Add new pages Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | seomagnet0