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.
Comments
2 responses so far ↓
Adam Lasnik on Jun 4, 2008 at 1:59 pm
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.
Eric Roth on Aug 8, 2008 at 1:52 am
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!
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