Google Webmaster Tools - content keywords containing spam?

[Henrik_Kruse]

Hi all,

When I looked in Google Webmaster Tools today I found under the menu Google Index, Content Keywords, that the list is full of spammy keywords (E.g. Viagra (no. 1) and stuff like that)

Around april we built a whole new website, uploaded a new xml-sitemap, and did all the other things Google Webmaster Tools suggest when one is creating a Google Webmaster Account.

Under the menu "Security Issues" nothing is mentioned.

All together I find it har d to believe that the site is hacked - so WHY is Google finding these content keywords on our site??

Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts?

Best regards,

Christian

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Christian,

It's a little difficult to say what might be going on without being able to actually see the site. You are welcome to PM me this or post it here and I will gladly take a look for you.

Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts? It all depends. If your site has indeed been hacked, you need to find out what has happened (and how it happened). What did you build the site in?

-Andy

[LauraSultan]

Here's what I would look for:

• Comment spam - Do you have any visible comment spam on your website that includes these types of keywords? If so, remove it all.
• Malware - Some types of malware will create new pages on your site that you can't access through a simple crawl from your home page. Search "site:example.com" in Google, replacing "example.com" with your domain name. Go through all of the results to see if Google has any pages indexed for your site that you don't recognize.

Even if Google doesn't flag your site for malware, it may still be there. Look at the files on the server to see if there are new files that shouldn't be there. Scan your site at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ to see if anything comes up there.

If your site is infected with malware, Google will eventually find it and flag your site. Yes, it will certainly harm your SEO efforts.

[Henrik_Kruse]

Hi Andy,

Thank you for your answer.

The site is build in Wordpress.

I have sent you a PM with my website (couldn't find your name, so I pm'ed iq SEO)

Best regards

[Henrik_Kruse]

Hi Laura,

Thank you for your answer.

• No comment spam.

• No malware found using Sucuri

• No problems found using site:example.com

(and the above is the reason why I am a surprised - I have never seen this before)

So ony reason I can think of is the old site was spammed/hacked and the new site is not...?

[DirkC]

Hi,

In the Search Analytics report could you put the filter on "Pages" rather than "Keywords" - and check if there are pages listed that seem suspicious to you?

Did you try "spammy keyword" site:yoursite.com in Google?

Recently there where quite some questions about wordpress sites that had been hacked - mainly caused by this vulnerability:

https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/slider-revolution-plugin-critical-vulnerability-being-exploited.html

or this one https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/12/revslider-vulnerability-leads-to-massive-wordpress-soaksoak-compromise.html

I guess that sucuri would normally detect this - but maybe you could doublecheck that you're not using these kind of slider on your site.

rgds,

Dirk

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Henrik,

Has this issue been resolved? We'd love an update! Thanks.

Christy

[Snoogle]

I've encountered the same issue on clients websites before. They had a wordpress site and as it turned out a hidden virus - that was showing different results to Google, than to users. So the virus couldn't be detected.

I ended up using this WP Plugin " Anti-Malware & Brute Force Security" to scan enter website. It should vulnerable files - which were removed everything cleaned up.

And as previous posters mentioned, Google/Sucuri may not see the malware know but when they do you're at risk of the site being blacklisted - so best to take care of it now.

hope that helps