Hi. I have been having some problems with my site over the last few
weeks in which my site has not been coming up in the results properly.
The site is http://www.theatons.com/
It all started around about the same time I changed my site to a
single very basic HTML page and then the blog which has been up since
early 2007. The first thing that happened was the homepage was totally
dropped from the Google index. It wouldn't even come up if I queried
site:theatons.com. If you did a search for Theatons on Google.co.uk
you would get results from theatons.com/blog/, but it would come up in
position three, whereas my homepage used to come up first. After the
recent PageRank update my homepage was reintroduced to the index and
now comes up number one for Theatons on Google UK. However the
PageRank has disappeared. Although, I think it will come back at the
next update. The PageRank on the blog has remained though. However now
my blog is not coming up in Google if I search 'theatons blog' - It
always used to come up for this.
Can anyone offer any advice on what can be done in this situation?
If it were me my first actio would be to look at the navigation. There
are no obvious links to the homepage from the blog. They actually look
like they are (almost) totally unrelated as they are barely linked and
on very different subjects.
> Hi. I have been having some problems with my site over the last few
> weeks in which my site has not been coming up in the results properly.
> The site ishttp://www.theatons.com/
> It all started around about the same time I changed my site to a
> single very basic HTML page and then the blog which has been up since
> early 2007. The first thing that happened was the homepage was totally
> dropped from the Google index. It wouldn't even come up if I queried
> site:theatons.com. If you did a search for Theatons on Google.co.uk
> you would get results from theatons.com/blog/, but it would come up in
> position three, whereas my homepage used to come up first. After the
> recent PageRank update my homepage was reintroduced to the index and
> now comes up number one for Theatons on Google UK. However the
> PageRank has disappeared. Although, I think it will come back at the
> next update. The PageRank on the blog has remained though. However now
> my blog is not coming up in Google if I search 'theatons blog' - It
> always used to come up for this.
> Can anyone offer any advice on what can be done in this situation?
Thanks Gissit. Although I don't think you have hit the hammer on the
head here. I think I may have found what the problem is. I have fixed
the issue now, but if you take a look at this page:
turn off CSS (no page style) and then scroll down to the bottom, you
will see hundreds off paid hidden links that have been added to my
site by a hacker. Pretty mush all of them look like they are pharmacy
related links.
I guess my rankings issues could have something to do with me
unwittingly linking to bad neighbourhoods due to the continuing bad
programming standards and lack of security knowledge displayed by the
WordPress team.
I'm off to submit this off to Matt Cutts and his excellent team.
> If it were me my first actio would be to look at the navigation. There
> are no obvious links to the homepage from the blog. They actually look
> like they are (almost) totally unrelated as they are barely linked and
> on very different subjects.
> On May 5, 10:15 pm, david64 wrote:
> > Hi. I have been having some problems with my site over the last few
> > weeks in which my site has not been coming up in the results properly.
> > The site ishttp://www.theatons.com/
> > It all started around about the same time I changed my site to a
> > single very basic HTML page and then the blog which has been up since
> > early 2007. The first thing that happened was the homepage was totally
> > dropped from the Google index. It wouldn't even come up if I queried
> > site:theatons.com. If you did a search for Theatons on Google.co.uk
> > you would get results from theatons.com/blog/, but it would come up in
> > position three, whereas my homepage used to come up first. After the
> > recent PageRank update my homepage was reintroduced to the index and
> > now comes up number one for Theatons on Google UK. However the
> > PageRank has disappeared. Although, I think it will come back at the
> > next update. The PageRank on the blog has remained though. However now
> > my blog is not coming up in Google if I search 'theatons blog' - It
> > always used to come up for this.
> > Can anyone offer any advice on what can be done in this situation?
The drop in traffic had me quite perplexed since I did not make any
changes to the site (which runs on Wordpress).
After reading your above post, I checked the source for my index page
and like you, I discovered several links to what appears to be
pharmacy sites hidden (<u style="display:none">) at the bottom of the
page.
- How did you remove the hidden links in your page? (did they
originate from a "bad" plugin, or just a hack of your pages?)
- Have you taken action to redeem your site with Google?
Hope you (or someone else) do not mind answering these questions...
> Thanks Gissit. Although I don't think you have hit the hammer on the
> head here. I think I may have found what the problem is. I have fixed
> the issue now, but if you take a look at this page:
> turn off CSS (no page style) and then scroll down to the bottom, you
> will see hundreds off paid hidden links that have been added to my
> site by a hacker. Pretty mush all of them look like they are pharmacy
> related links.
> I guess my rankings issues could have something to do with me
> unwittingly linking to bad neighbourhoods due to the continuing bad
> programming standards and lack of security knowledge displayed by the
> WordPress team.
> I'm off to submit this off to Matt Cutts and his excellent team.
> Thanks
> David
> On May 5, 10:36 pm, Gissit wrote:
> > If it were me my first actio would be to look at the navigation. There
> > are no obvious links to the homepage from the blog. They actually look
> > like they are (almost) totally unrelated as they are barely linked and
> > on very different subjects.
> > On May 5, 10:15 pm, david64 wrote:
> > > Hi. I have been having some problems with my site over the last few
> > > weeks in which my site has not been coming up in the results properly.
> > > The site ishttp://www.theatons.com/
> > > It all started around about the same time I changed my site to a
> > > single very basic HTML page and then the blog which has been up since
> > > early 2007. The first thing that happened was the homepage was totally
> > > dropped from the Google index. It wouldn't even come up if I queried
> > > site:theatons.com. If you did a search for Theatons on Google.co.uk
> > > you would get results from theatons.com/blog/, but it would come up in
> > > position three, whereas my homepage used to come up first. After the
> > > recent PageRank update my homepage was reintroduced to the index and
> > > now comes up number one for Theatons on Google UK. However the
> > > PageRank has disappeared. Although, I think it will come back at the
> > > next update. The PageRank on the blog has remained though. However now
> > > my blog is not coming up in Google if I search 'theatons blog' - It
> > > always used to come up for this.
> > > Can anyone offer any advice on what can be done in this situation?
Chris, once you have cleaned it up, make sure you submit a
reconsideration request through your Webmaster Tools account,
detailing what happened and how you resolved it.
gersbo, you will probably find that the links have been inseted into
the template files in your wp-content/themes/{my-theme) folder. A
hacker has probably got access to your admin panel by retrieving your
username and password (which can be done a number of ways on WordPress
- a very insecure platform). They then would have simply modified the
php template files. I would recommend changing your username and
password, maybe even your MySQL details too. You should also upgrade
to the latest WordPress.
As John points out, you then need to sign up for Google webmaster
tools. To do this:
Google 'google webmaster tools'
sign up
You will then need to verify your site by adding some code to your
site.
Once you are verified on the homepage of the webmaster tools on the
bottom right is a button that says something like submit a
reconsideration request. You will probably want to make a backup of
the hacked version of your site to show them.
> Chris, once you have cleaned it up, make sure you submit a
> reconsideration request through your Webmaster Tools account,
> detailing what happened and how you resolved it.
Also. One more tip would be to remove from your blog any mention of
WordPress, such as in the footer where it says "powered by wordpress".
Hackers call these dorks and they use them to harvest vulnerable
websites. The two most popular ways that hackers harvest wordpress is
by searching for "powered by wordpress" and many hackers also have
databases of WordPress powered sites. They use this to mass download
RSS feeds and in the RSS feed it says which version of WordPress is
being used, which can be used by hackers to find a hack for that
particular version of WordPress.
Thank you very much for responding to my call for help. I really
appreciate the suggestions you have made.
I have looked through the links and tips and implemented them were
appropriate. I seem to have cleansed my site, but I guess I should
keep a closer eye on things from now on.
Actually, I am signed up with Google webmaster tools - I have
submitted my site and a sitemap, it is verified and all. That is how I
found my way to this forum. At no time has my site been flagged and
after reading your tips, I also checked http://www.stopbadware.org/home/clearinghouse - no mention of my site there either.
So, do you think I should (or must) submit a reconsideration request
at Google webmaster tools to "redeem" my site? Or will things
straighten themselves out, now that my site is no longer spamming its
visitors?
> Also. One more tip would be to remove from your blog any mention of
> WordPress, such as in the footer where it says "powered by wordpress".
> Hackers call these dorks and they use them to harvest vulnerable
> websites. The two most popular ways that hackers harvest wordpress is
> by searching for "powered by wordpress" and many hackers also have
> databases of WordPress powered sites. They use this to mass download
> RSS feeds and in the RSS feed it says which version of WordPress is
> being used, which can be used by hackers to find a hack for that
> particular version of WordPress.
> Thank you very much for responding to my call for help. I really
> appreciate the suggestions you have made.
> I have looked through the links and tips and implemented them were
> appropriate. I seem to have cleansed my site, but I guess I should
> keep a closer eye on things from now on.
> Actually, I am signed up with Google webmaster tools - I have
> submitted my site and a sitemap, it is verified and all. That is how I
> found my way to this forum. At no time has my site been flagged and
> after reading your tips, I also checkedhttp://www.stopbadware.org/home/clearinghouse > - no mention of my site there either.
> So, do you think I should (or must) submit a reconsideration request
> at Google webmaster tools to "redeem" my site? Or will things
> straighten themselves out, now that my site is no longer spamming its
> visitors?
> I will appreciate any thoughts on this.
> Thanks again
> chris
> On May 6, 8:07 am, david64 wrote:
> > Also. One more tip would be to remove from your blog any mention of
> > WordPress, such as in the footer where it says "powered by wordpress".
> > Hackers call these dorks and they use them to harvest vulnerable
> > websites. The two most popular ways that hackers harvest wordpress is
> > by searching for "powered by wordpress" and many hackers also have
> > databases of WordPress powered sites. They use this to mass download
> > RSS feeds and in the RSS feed it says which version of WordPress is
> > being used, which can be used by hackers to find a hack for that
> > particular version of WordPress.- Hide quoted text -
gersbo, I think it probably would be a good idea to submit the
reconsideration request, as John suggests you do this and he is
somewhat of an authority here.
> gersbo, I think it probably would be a good idea to submit the
> reconsideration request, as John suggests you do this and he is
> somewhat of an authority here.
> gersbo, I think it probably would be a good idea to submit the
> reconsideration request, as John suggests you do this and he is
> somewhat of an authority here.
