NOTE: All uses of the word H*ck have been changed to Jack. This is to prevent Google or Facebook from thinking this PARTICULAR page has been JACKED. Facebook felt it imperative to warn users because the page used the actual word…
If You’ve Been Jacked – Google Knows
If you’ve been jacked, Google probably knows about it. The last thing you want is for someone to search for your company or what you do, and find your website with a not so cute warning next to it that “this site may be jacked.” Fixing the jack is the first step – next we need to let Google know it has been fixed. Here are the steps to telling Google your site is no longer jacked.
In order to fix your search results, I think submitting a sitemap within Google Webmaster Tools will be the best option.
In order to do that we had to:
- Create a Google Webmaster Tools account
- Install & Configure Yoast SEO Plugin
- Submit a sitemap and then
- Mark crawl errors as fixed and
- Request a review of the website
Here are some bad search results…
Here is where they are even WORSE.
1st, we created a Google Webmaster Tools Account – then logged in. Simple enough.
Apparently Google has 5k pages not found as indicated in the dashboard…
By looking in the URL errors section we can see that the jack hit on April 25th and continued manifesting itself through May 5th. Our first jack was prior to March 26th, so it was definitely a second attack that caused most of the problems, and that could have been from a vulnerability opened in the 1st one.
Here’s an outline of the serious security issue…
We are hoping by confirming the site with Google Webmaster Tools and submitting a sitemap, that we can clear the issue up quickly.
The next step is to install Yoast SEO Plugin, which has built in Sitemap functionality among other important components.
The Sitemap wasn’t working at first so after some research, discovered that saving the Permalinks was the fix.
Page titles weren’t correct either, a check in Force Rewrite Titles fixed those.
Next, while we were in there, we told Yoast to Tell Google about the Facebook Page.
Then we got the URL of the new XML sitemap.
With the XML Sitemap URL in the clipboard, we browsed to the Sitemaps page in GWT and submitted the sitemap at 1:38 AM (May 16th).
Then we Marked All Crawl Errors as Fixed as an extra indication to Google we had cleared up the issues.
From there we Marked the Jack as Fixed & Requested a Review
By adding an explanation, we hope that Google’s employees will take our efforts more seriously. Here is what I told them we did:
“Changed all passwords, updated wordpress & plugins, installed a Sucuri security plugin, ran multiple security scans, switched to a secure web host and tested extensively to make everything is clean.”
Success. Now we will check back to see how long it takes them to fix our search results.
UPDATE 06.03.15
Google is still listing bad URLS in the index.
When I click any of them I get what is to be expected – a 404 error. But as you can see in the image – the URL is still a static URL, therefore Google was reading it as a legitimate address.
Therefore there is one Very Important Last Step on this process to clear up a Jacked Site – install the SEO Redirection plugin, and configure the plugin to send all 404s to the home page.
Now when we click any of the Chinese jack links, it redirects to the home page.
Apparently Google wasn’t smart enough to figure out that a 404 is a DEAD LINK. Hopefully by pointing them back to the home page each and every time – they WILL realize the link is NO LONGER VALID.
Even after submitting a SPECIFIC SITEMAP – Google still found 404 URLs valid. This I suspect is an area they can improve.
Anybody know someone who works at Google on the Search Team? Let’s get this escalated. Im also in need of more information on bad credit lending yahoo.com
