Weird Cigarette URLs showing up in Google Webmaster Tools
-
Hi there,
I'm noticing a bunch of URLs showing up in my google webmaster tools that are all cigarette related (they are appearing as 404s in the crawl error report). They are throwing 404 errors which is why they are listed here...
Anyone have any idea of what this could be? I recently switched from Wordpress to Shopify and these weird URLs just started appearing on my webmaster tools in the last week. Kinda bizarre / a little alarming!
Thanks,
Bianca -
Awesome! Thank you so much for your help. You rock!
-
I would actually just try to mark it as fixed. 404's are not a big deal nowadays. It's just troublesome sometimes because WMT keeps bugging you about it, especially when you have links pointing to those pages.
-
Actually - one quick question. Should I do anything in webmaster tools - mark them as fixed? Or remove the links manually? Or should I just leave the crawl errors there since they are 404s?
-
This I can do! Thank you for your help.
-
Most likely a breach to your wordpress. If it's an old, outdated version, had vulnerable plugins or the server security was brute forced.
http://web.archive.org/web//http://www.batesmillstore.com/
filter with Buy or Cigar
You'll see that it has been there for a while.
Secure your website, server. Check your backlinks for cigarette links and don't worry about those 404's too much.
-
Maybe Ken? Another company had built and hosted the site for the company (my first project coming on board a few months ago was a new website that we'd manage in-house).
So, the odd thing based on what you were saying is that the links are being show to be coming from was: http://batesmillstore.com/shop/cable-weave-throw (which had been returning a 404 before but is not properly mapped to the right product on the new website).
Thoughts?
-
-
Hi,
Shot in the dark here but is is possible your old site was hacked and someone was hosting some pages there without your knowledge? You might not have seen them in WMT because they had little traffic then but now that they're 404s they are front and center.
FYI, my thought process is based on something similar that happened to me. About a year ago in my WMT I found 1000s of links from other sites. It turns out that people had made copies of the layout and graphics of my site and were putting in random text and putting them on in directories on other sites without the owners knowing. I wound up emailing dozens of site owners and had them removed - they had no idea they were there.
Just a thought.
Ken
-
could you post an example of the URLs you are seeing?
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
-
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Google webmaster is not crawling links and site cache still in old date
Hi guys, I have been trying to get my page indexed in Google with new title and descriptions but it is not getting indexed. I have checked in many tools but no useful. Can you please tell me what could be the issue? Even I have set up And Google webmaster is not crawling links I have built so far. Few links are indexed but others do not. Why this is happening. My url is: https://www.paydaysunny.com thanks
Technical SEO | | ksmith880 -
How do I get my pages to go from "Submitted" to "Indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools?
Background: I recently launched a new site and it's performing much better than the old site in terms of bounce rate, page view, pages per session, session duration, and conversions. As suspected, sessions, users, and % new sessions are all down. Which I'm okay with because the the old site had a lot of low quality traffic going to it. The traffic we have now is much more engaged and targeted. Lastly, the site was built using Squarespace and was launched the middle of August. **Question: **When reviewing Google Webmaster Tools' Sitemaps section, I noticed it says 57 web pages Submitted, but only 5 Indexed! The sitemap that's submitted seems to be all there. I'm not sure if this is a Squarespace thing or what. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Nate_D0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Webmaster Tools Links To Your Site
I logged onto webmaster tools today for my site and the section 'Links to Your Site' is showing no data. Also if I search using link:babskibaby.com it only shows 1 link. My site had been showing 500+ links previously. Does anyone know why this is?
Technical SEO | | babski0 -
Google webmasters showing links from my own IP
Was looking at Google webmasters earlier today and I noticed that links are shown from my own IP address. Really weird. Any clue on how to fix that?
Technical SEO | | EricMoore0 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0