Homepage refusing to show up in Google (rest of pages fine)

[laidlaw1]

Hi Patrick

Thanks for taking a look. If I could ask, where are you seeing this noindex tag and what are you using to see it? I've got my homepage set up in the yoast seo plugin to index and follow, and I had also previously added a  into my header just to make sure. My suspicion is that the sitelock firewall installed on our site right now is blocking robots. Does this make any sense?

Thanks again

[Travis_Bailey]

I think Incapsula is throwing the false noindex tag. But yeah, that's just how Incapsula do. The home page shows just fine with a site: operator.

Judging by the anchor text I see pointed at the site... and the Timthumbs.php file... the site was very very hacked at some point.

Edit: Yep. It was hacked until late last year.

[laidlaw1]

It absolutely was very hacked. I'm currently in the process of submitting takedowns manually for those spam posts in google's index. The site has been cleaned up and relaunched since. Could these be harming the indexing of the homepage as well?

[MattAntonino]

Let me guess - you're using SiteLock after you were hacked to keep them out?

SiteLock creates this issue frequently (we solved it for another Q&A user about a month ago.)

Disable SiteLock, check your settings are all right in Webmasters Tools and Fetch the page in WMT.  Add a link to it on Google+ so it gets recrawled quickly.

I only see 1 backlink to the site from Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains?target=www.newstaradhesives.com) and only 2 in Majestic (https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=www.newstaradhesives.com)

Very, very low authority & SiteLock - those would be the two I'd start with.

[Travis_Bailey]

The entire site appears to index fine. As Patrick pointed out, it appears some of the pages in the index aren't https. But I don't know when you made the move, so things may be chugging right along.

The issue is ranking. But I know what you mean.

So what we have is (not all bad, per se - just what I see):

• Previously hacked site
• Timthumb file
• Some very spammy links
• HTTPS implemented on unknown date
• Moved to CDN / WAF
• Redirects

No doubt, you're going to have to disavow the bad links. Take down requests are nice and all, and you should note them in your disavow submission, but you don't have to manually contact each individual link/domain. It's not really a fire-and-forget process. You can submit it more than once.

I would bet a shiny nickle the attack/hack exploited the timthumb file. The site still uses it. Stop using it. Find an alternative. All it does is resize images.

The https migration (redirects... etc.) is just a confounding factor.

After you've removed the timthumb file, request a security review. Also consider the site may still have issues from the hack. So fetch as google from Webmaster Tools. If you see anything different than the real page, you still have a problem.

Read a little more about recovering from a hacked site here. I think that's more than likely the core of the problem right now.

[Travis_Bailey]

The site is using Incapsula as a CDN and web application firewall. The site still has a timthumb file. So I wouldn't recommend stepping out from behind that right now.

A wildcard search on the domain yields a lot of spam backlinks. Check ahrefs.

[laidlaw1]

This is a huge help. I spent some time yesterday going through the site and updating my links to https where possible. Those don't all appear to have indexed yet. The bit about the timthumb exploit is particularly helpful. My theme lets me disable that, and I can get rid of the timthumb php file. I'm still concerned that sitelock could be exaggerating the problem though, we started having these issues with google around when it was implemented.

[Travis_Bailey]

All of the header checks I've done come back with Incapsula. I don't really want to get much further into that for a number of reasons. But if you're actually paying SiteLock that's pretty interesting.

But you're saying the site ranked for it's brand term, at least, before implementing either SiteLock or Incapsula?

[laidlaw1]

Exactly, I've been told that these problems surfaced around the time the firewall was put up. I've just removed the timthumb file and I'm working on disavowing the spammy links pointing to us. I'm considering ditching sitelock in the next few days and seeing if that helps at all. We were also looking at Sucuri as a firewall option as well.

[Travis_Bailey]

So, on an invoice, do you or the client pay Incapsula or SiteLock?

[laidlaw1]

SiteLock

[Travis_Bailey]

Ah, I was wondering since they may have entirely different pricing based upon who you talk to.

https://www.sitelock.com/plans.php

https://www.incapsula.com/pricing-and-plans.html