Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Meta Description for ALL my Posts is Being Overwritten!
Every single one of my posts meta descriptions are being overritten with the same meta description! I use Yoast and have proper meta descriptions in my posts, but something seems to be overriding them. https://ibb.co/rcgWNXb Any idea what could be causing this? Thank you!!! Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety1 -
Finding websites that don't have meta descriptions
Hi everyone, as a way to find new business leads I thought about targeting websites that have poor meta descriptions or where they are simply missing. A quick look at SERPs shows this is still a major issue for many businesses. Is there any way I can quickly find pages for which meta description is lacking? Thank you! Best regards, Florian
Technical SEO | | agencepicnic0 -
Meta descriptions and h1 tags during a 301 redirect
My employer is shifting to a new domain and i am in the midst of doing URL mapping. I realize that many of the meta descriptions and H1 tags are different on the new pages - is this a problem ? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | ptapley0 -
Commas in Meta Title and Description Okay?
Hey there guys, have heard some recent information from some experts that utilizing commas in headings, meta titles or descriptions is not good for ranking. Can you guys please shed some light on this? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | MrGlobalization0 -
Should I put meta descriptions on pages that are not indexed?
I have multiple pages that I do not want to be indexed (and they are currently not indexed, so that's great). They don't have meta descriptions on them and I'm wondering if it's worth my time to go in and insert them, since they should hypothetically never be shown. Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks! The reason this is a question is because one member of our team was linking to this page through Facebook to send people to it and noticed random text on the page being pulled in as the description.
Technical SEO | | Viewpoints0 -
Error: Missing Meta Description Tag on pages I can't find in order to correct
This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
Technical SEO | | gfiedel
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!0 -
How do I add meta descriptions to Archives in Wordpress?
My most recent crawl returned a number of 'missing meta description' errors, and when I checked individual URLs, it turned out they were Wordpress Archived pages - for individual months and days (e.g. http:// .../2011/01). What's the best way to go about adding descriptions to these pages, if at all? Or should I have these pages not be indexed? I am using the All in One SEO plugin, so maybe there is an easy fix through this plugin, or it may be the cause of these errors? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance! **EDIT After looking it up further, I have decided to use noindex for Archives, which should solve my problem right? Or is there a benefit to having those archived pages?
Technical SEO | | NetPicks0