Site Hacked: Is it Faster and Better to 301 or 404 Irrelevant URLs?
-
Hey Everyone,
So our site was hacked which created a large amount of irrelevant URLs on our domain; resulting in thousands of 404 errors and pages coming up for searches unrelated to our brand. The question is now that the issues have been resolved (and site re-submitted) would it be quicker (and more ideal) to redirect important 404 errors that see traffic, have links…etc. although not relevant or just let everything 404 out?
We’re not as concerned with offering a relevant user experience because these are not in our demographic but want to avoid these pages convoluting our analytics as well as issues that might arise from Google thinking these topics do apply.
Any help or insight would be very appreciated.
Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or we could provide further details that might help.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you!
Thanks in advance.
Best,
-
Hi Ben!
I have similar problem with one of my sites. It was hacked before and now Google is showing number of irrelevant links that too in a different language. I have implemented redirects to most of them but they still appear in results.
- What do you think about blocking them in robots.txt?
- Or requesting URL removals in GSC?
I'd really appreciate any help from the community!
Thanks!
SK
-
Hi Ben,
No, will not expedite it. It will take time for Google index to catch up and remove them. I know it's frustrating, so just be patient with it. Most of us, including myself, have been through it. Good luck!
-
Hello Kevin,
Thank you for your response and help. That’s a great point, do you think it would help speed things along if we also redirect on top of the 410 error? - Just in case and more in the meantime.
Please let us know if we could provide any further details that might help.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks again.
Best,
-
If not relevant, why 301 them? 410 them and remove url's in search console.
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
-
Is having the same URL in several sitemaps a problem for google?
We have 30 sitemaps, one for each language version of our site. About 5000 pages per sitemap.
Reporting & Analytics | | lcourse
To get a better idea on which pages google is not indexing, I thought about quickly generating sitemaps by page cagetories to see if there are any patterns. Any problems if I submit now new additional sitemaps dividing all our pages by product page, considering that the same pages are already in our existing sitemaps we submitted in the search console. So having same URL in more than 1 sitemap would be a problem? As a side note, we observed when adding a sitemap index that google search console in its count of total indexed pages, now counts every page twice since we submitted both the sitemap index and the individual sitemaps, so search console does not recognize in count that sitemaps in sitemaps index are identical to the ones we submitted individually in search console.0 -
Launching a new site
What is the best method for Google Analytics implementation? Should I use the same UA id for the new site, or create an new one for the new site?
Reporting & Analytics | | brianvest0 -
How do sites without access to a site's analytical data, determine a site's organic traffic?
I've recently used a organic traffic checker that showed you your traffic compared to each google algo update. I was interested in how they derived the organic traffic totals for each month, without having access to our site's google analytics? I've since compared the data to historical google analytics data and it's not wrong, isn't 100% match either but isn't far from fact. So if they're predicting or making a guess, it's rather spot on, site crawlers and SERPs snapshots only provide so much info, I'm just wondering where they get the rest from and how?
Reporting & Analytics | | Deacyde0 -
Is it possible to set up one of the Goal Conversions on Google Analytics for a different site?
We are in the process of a website migration and need to set up the conversions for the new site. What is the most effective way of doing this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
What are the consequences of doing a 301 redirect?
Just recently we did a redirection from a website that is ranking very well. The redirection was done through redirecting the page of the website A to the related page of website B. Website B raked massive traffic in the first week and have increased its ranking among Google searches but recently the traffic seems to decline. Website A which was ranking very well before redirection is now nowhere to be found on Google search. Is this a consequence of doing redirection? Please help.
Reporting & Analytics | | ISMEPTYLTD-SEOMOZ0 -
May last year my sites orgainic listings, and therfore visitors, plumeted. Why?
Hello, May last year my site took a major fall. I am unsure why, and it's time I found out why. Recently I have rebuilt the site from scratch, except for the urls and content, and it's starting to turn back. What is the best method to go about understanding just what caused the decline? What are the options I have? See the image for a graph of the all-time traffic. http://i.imgur.com/uL93yPj.png My website in question is: www.ditalia.com.au Thanks. uL93yPj.png
Reporting & Analytics | | infinart0 -
Does anyone know of a way to do a profile level filter to exclude all traffic if it enters the site via certain landing pages?
Does anyone know of a way to do a profile level filter to exclude all traffic if it enters the site via certain landing pages? The problem I have is that we have several pages that are served to visitors of numerous other domains but are also served to visitors of our site. We end up with inflated Google Analytics numbers because people are viewing these pages from our partners' domains but never actually entering our site. I've made an advanced segment that serves the purpose but I'd really like to filter it at the profile level so the numbers across the board are more accurate without having to apply an advanced segment to every report. The advanced segment excludes visits that hit these pages as landing pages but includes visits where people have come from other pages on our domain. I know that you can do profile filters to exclude visits to pages or directories entirely but is there a way to filter them only if they are a landing pages? Any other creative thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ATIseo0 -
Reasons for drop in URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search
Hi I'm having trouble understanding why I'm getting the results I am for my organic traffic data. I've been focussing on a few keywords throughout my website and the most recent results show that there is a big increase in the Organic Search Visits and the Non-Paid Keywords Sending Search Visits for both Branded Keywords and Non-branded Keywords, but the results for URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search are the complete opposite. Down by a few percent. I don't understand why this would happen and was hoping that someone could maybe explain and give a few reasons for why this is happening and maybe give some tips on how to stop it from happening in the future if possible. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bonx0