Website was hacked and is clean now. What to do next for Google?
-
Hai All,
Website was hacked and is clean now. What to do next?
- Send a Reconsideration Request to Google through Google search console. How detailed should this request be? As detailed as possible? And how much time will it usually take before Google responds?
- Should I remove all infected URL’s that Google has indexed by using Google search console, remove URL’s? Or is this not necessary?
(All the infected URL’s will give a 404 statuscode now)
Regards, Maurice
-
Hi Travis and Chris,
Thanks a lot for your helpfull answers!
We got a manual action by Google because of all the infected URL's.
The website is clean now and 2 professionals are monitoring the website continiously. So I am confident it will stay clean.
I have all the information now for the reconsidiration request.
Thanks again!
Regards, Maurice
-
TL;DR Follow Google's Guide on Recovering a Hacked Site
Orrrrr.... deze.
First, are you 100% sure it's clean? Some people get lucky, and have a clean backup. Others aren't so lucky.
Some hacks come in 'low and slow'. In other words, the site could have been compromised well before any outward signs became apparent. So definitely consult a security professional, if you haven't already done so. (Sometimes your host will 'clean' it for you, but miss critical points, and you're back in the same spot later.)
I suppose it couldn't hurt to remove URLs created by the hack. But if they're all gone, resolving as 404 ,they will drop out of the index in a couple weeks or sooner. The main thing is that the site is clean.
If you're sure it's clean, submit the site for review. The guides I've linked mention that it will take several weeks. And once Google has determined the site is clean, you should see any of the 'hacked' and/or 'malware' snippets disappear within a few days.
And I seriously recommend having a security professional review the site and hosting. A security professional will not only help you determine the cause of the problem, but also with mitigation of future risks. Best of luck.
-
Hi Maurice,
To answer this one accurately, we'll need a little more info on what happened. What was changed on your site as a result of the hacking? Were you hit with a manual penalty or is it just algorithmic? What have you done about fixing it so far?
With that info I can be a little more helpful
For some broader advice though, do everything you can to restore your site to its original state and if it has been a manual penalty, definitely provide a detailed account of what happened and what you're doing to fix it via Search Console. If it's just algorithmic, fixing your site and continuing to improve it is going to be your best way to fix it.
Regarding the pages that have been taken down, just make sure Screaming Frog or a similar tool isn't picking up any 404s from them - if it sees no 404s it means there are no remaining internal links to those pages. That being the case, the only 404s will be from external sites which aren't your responsibility. Once this is done, Google will realise fairly quickly (hours to a couple of weeks) that they're actually gone and de-index them.
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
-
If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Hi, all please tell me. If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourav60 -
How i get link to my website
hi i'm very new in seo want to have links to my website:www.warningbroker.com how i can get links to my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing660 -
Advice for structuring hotel website
Hey guys, I am currently setting up a hotel booking website and I'm not so sure how to structure it. I have landing pages for: 1. Cities
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | baresound
2. Sights
3. States The main keywords are mainly "Hotels in Cityname" or "Hotels near Sightname". What would be the best SEO friendly way of structuring the url? https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cities/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sights/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/states/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-statename Or are there better ways of structuring it or am I just overthinking it? I would greatly appreciate any advice and suggestions 🙂 Best, Max0 -
SEO issues? New functionality added to website and now hash (in URL) - fragments
Hi All! We have new nice functionality on website, but now i doubt if we will have SEO issues. Duplicate content and if google is able to spider our website. See: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1370
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetailClicks
With the new functionality we can switch between colors of the models (black / white / red / yellow).
When you switch with Ajax the content of other models is fetched without refreshing the page. (so the url initial part of url stays the same (for initial model) only part behind # changes. The other models are also accessible by there own url, like the red one: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-rosso.html#608=1372 So far so good. But now the questions: 1. We use to have url like /boretti-da-vinci-nero.html - also our canonical is that way But now if we access that url our system is adding automatically the #123-123 to the url to indicate which model(color) is shown. Is this hurting SEO or confusing google? Because it seems that the clean url is not accessible anymore? (it adds now #123-123) 2. Should we add some tags around the different types (colors) to prevent google from indexing that part of website? Every info would be very helpfull! We do not want to lose our nice rankings thanks to MOZ! Thanks all!
Jeroen0 -
Google News sitemap keywords
My company is a Theater news and reviews site. We're building a google news sitemap and Google suggests some recommended keywords we can use with their <keywords>tag: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/116037</keywords> Our writers also tag their stories with relevant keywords. What should we populate the <keywords>tag with?</keywords> We were thinking we'd automatically populate it with author-added tags, in addition to one or more of the recommended ones suggested by Google, such as Theater, Arts, and Culture (all of our articles are related to these topics). Finally, many of our articles are about say, celebrities. An author may tag an article with 'Bryan Cranston,' and when this is the case we're considering also tagging it with the 'Celebrities' tag. Are all or any of these worthwhile?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Could this work for Google Reconsideration Request?
One of my websites has received the following message: We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. I have used LinkResearchTools DTOX to locate unnatural links and remove them. So far I've been able to remove or nofollow 50/350 and that's as far as I can ever go. The rest of the websites either don't respond or don't have any contact information. I added another 300 suspicious websites to my list and I'll try to get the links manually removed. Hopefully I can get 100/650 websites (and a bit more links) removed in total - at most. That is my estimate. I've been thinking to use Google Disavow Tool for the rest and make sure to submit a nicely written report with spreadsheets to Google - when I get to the reconsideration point. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zorsto0 -
Purpose of a Blog in a website
How internal blog or external blog is helpful in SEO?why it is good to have a site with blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Unable to Crawl my Website
Hi all, I have a website that I am trying to promote, but tried to add it here in SEOMoz and got the following message: We have detected that the root domain evolving-networks.co.uk does not respond to web requests. Using this domain, we will be unable to crawl your site or present accurate SERP information. Does anyone know why this website cannot be crawled? Please help. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LSDigital0