Question spam malware causing many indexed pages

[evan89]

Hey Mozzers,

I was speaking with a friend today about a site that he has been working on that was infected when he began working on it. Here (https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site:themeliorist.ca) you can see that the site has 4400 indexed pages, but if you scroll down you will see some pages such as /pfizer-viagra-samples/ or /dapoxetine-kentucky/. All of these pages are returning 404 errors, and I ran it through SEO spider just to see if any of these pages would show up, and they don't.

This is not an issue for a client, but I am just curious why these pages are still hanging around in the index. Maybe others have experience this issue too.

Cheers,

[Ray-pp]

Sometimes search engines do not update as frequently as we would like them to. Since you've already verified that these pages no longer exist on your site, I would also suggest that you actively try to have them removed using your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Google source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey

You can use the URL removal tool to expedite this and it is one of the few times that Google actually recommends you do so: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1269119?hl=en. Likewise, the URLs will eventually fall away but it can take some time.

The most important thing here is to ensure the site is 100% protected going forwards and does not get reinfected. The pharma hack often has three backdoors in WP itself, a plugin and often the database. These can go for months without being called and suddenly, the site is reinfected again and they are getting better all the time at making this harder and harder to clean up.

This is worth a read:
http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/07/understanding-and-cleaning-the-pharma-hack-on-wordpress.html

We often also see a second degree payload with some black hat SEO and outbound links on the site so even when you get rid of the main problem, you may have a few small residual problems. I would suggest an SEO audit, some pro active security and at very least review the outbound links from the site to make sure they are all legit (Screaming Frog is your friend here and it will show external links + linking page).

Hope that helps!
Marcus