More and more webmasters become victims of hackers who put hidden links at their blogs. At Google Webmaster Groups I read daily approximately every tenth blogger complains that his site has been hacked.
A few red flags that might mean your site has been attacked by a hacker:
- your site has been dropped out of Google index without any reason;
- you get a rise of unusual traffic (especially for searches that have nothing to do with your site);
- Google webmaster tools report unusual keywords in your site content:
I can’t say I always support the way Google handles problems but I find it impressive how they cooperate with webmasters to fight hackers.
- Prior to taking any actions Google does its best to notify a webmaster of possible problems:
- they notify a webmaster via Google tools;
- they send an email alert to a webmaster to a most probable email address (admin@yourdomain.com, webmaster@yourdomain.com, contact@yourdomain.com, etc).
Note: they are reported to be more eager to notify the owner of the site that has never been caught for breaking Google guidelines.
- They are reported to be fast and efficient at returning the cleaned site back to index and recovering its rankings.
And at the end a few simple tips on avoiding the problem or handling it:
- always make sure your Wordpress version is up-to-date (you can install automatic upgrade plugin that will save you of the trouble);
- make sure your hosting provider handles the situation properly (if not, better move your site to a more secure company);
- follow Google’s advice and once your site is cleaned, request your site reinclusion at Google webmaster tools.
Hey Ann,
Thanks for the positive shoutout regarding our efforts in the area of hacked sites. Helping webmasters in this situation really does help everyone:
- Google’s search results improve.
- Webmasters infect fewer of their visitors and can more quickly excise embarrassing or sometimes blatantly offensive content and links from their sites.
And, most importantly,
- Users have less of a chance of getting their computers infected with malware.
* * *
I especially liked your “to-do” list at the end — spot on!
And by the way, I also want to humbly note that *anyone* can get hacked. I’m not going to mention names (one of them rhymes with “Madam”), but at least a few of us Googlers have gotten hit, too. It’s never fun :(.
Anyway, thanks again for highlighting this important issue.
Thank you for publishing this practical, informative, and illuminating article with a solid checklist.
As someone who used to see about 5 PDFs a day of a conversation book when I had 500 visitors, I’ve wondered how my sales could decline when the host shows over 56,000 requests a week! Now I know what to research… and this was a painful lesson!