Google’s John Mueller answered a question about removing hacked URLs that are showing in the index. He explained how to remove the sites from appearing in the search results and then discussed the nuances involved in dealing with this specific situation.
Removing Hacked Pages From Google’s SERPs
The person asking the question was the victim of the Japanese hacking attack, so-called because the attackers create hundreds or even thousands of rogue Japanese language web pages. The person had dealt with the issue and removed the spammy infected web pages, leaving them with 404 pages that are still referenced in Google’s search results.
They now want to remove them from Google’s search index so that the site is no longer associated with those pages.
They asked:
“My site recently got a Japanese attack. However, I shifted that site to a new hosting provider and have removed all data from there.
However, the fact is that many Japanese URLs have been indexed.
So how do I deindex those thousands of URLs from my website?”
The question reflects a common problem in the aftermath of a Japanese hack attack, where hacked pages stubbornly remain indexed long after the pages were removed. This shows that site recovery is not complete once the malicious content is removed; Google’s search index needs to clear the pages, and that can take a frustratingly long time.
How To Remove Japanese Hack Attack Pages From Google
Google’s John Mueller recommended using the URL Removals Tool found in Search Console. Contrary to the implication inherent in the name of the tool, it doesn’t remove a URL from the search index; it just removes it from showing in Google’s search results faster if the content has already been removed from the site or blocked from Google’s crawler. Under normal circumstances, Google will remove a page from the search results after the page is crawled and noted to be blocked or gone (404 error response).
Three Prerequisites For URL Removals Tool
- The page is removed and returns a 404 or 410 server response code.
- The URL is blocked from indexing by a robots meta tag: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
- The URL is prevented from being crawled by a robots.txt file.
Google’s Mueller responded:
“You can use the URL removal tool in search console for individual URLs (also if the URLs all start with the same thing). I’d use that for any which are particularly visible (check the performance report, 24 hours).
This doesn’t remove them from the index, but it hides them within a day. If the pages are invalid / 404 now, they’ll also drop out over time, but the removal tool means you can stop them from being visible “immediately”. (Redirecting o 404 are both ok, technically a 404 is the right response code)”
Mueller clarified that the URL Removals Tool does not delete URLs from Google’s index but instead hides them from search results, faster than natural recrawling would. His explanation is a reminder that the tool has a temporary search visibility effect and is not a way to permanently remove a URL from Google’s index itself. The actual removal from the search index happens after Google verifies that the page is actually gone or blocked from crawling or indexing.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero
