The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. SEO and Digital Marketing Q&A Forum
    2. Categories
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. Malicious links on our site indexed by Google but only visible to bots

    Malicious links on our site indexed by Google but only visible to bots

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4 3 75
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • SEO-Bas
      SEO-Bas last edited by

      We've been suffering from some very nasty black hat seo. In Google's index, our pages show external links to various pharmaceutical websites, but our actual live pages don't show them. It seems as though only certain user-agents see the malicious links. Setting up Screaming Frog SEO crawler using the Googlebot user agent also sees the malicious links.

      Any idea what could have caused this or how this can be stopped? We scanned all files on our webserver and couldn't find any of malicious links. We've changed our FTP and CMS passwords, is there anything else we can do?

      Thanks in advance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Andy.Drinkwater
        Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

        Hi Bas,

        Without looking in more detail, it is almost impossible to say how it has been done, but there are so many dirty tricks out there.

        Is the site running on Wordpress? Do you want to PM me an example to have a look at?

        -Andy

        SEO-Bas 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • SEO-Bas
          SEO-Bas @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

          Hi Andy,

          Thanks for your help. The problem seems to be fixed by doing the following:

          • Restore backup
          • Change all relevant passwords
          • Fetch and crawl all affected pages
          • Get malicious URL's on our domain in Google's index removed from Google's index

          See more affected websites (make sure to load the page in Google's cache): https://www.google.nl/search?q="viagra+kopen"&safe=off&biw=1680&bih=881&tbs=qdr:w&ei=AbSgV_uvM8j6aeaHkKAH&start=0&sa=N

          Thanks anyways!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MattRoney
            MattRoney last edited by

            Hi SEO-Bas! Just checking, is the issue resolved? I want to make sure you get the help you need, if not. 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post
            • My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions???
              davebuts
              davebuts
              0
              2
              121

            • Malicious bots
              BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing
              0
              5
              1.1k

            • WP Datar site shady linking to my site
              Andy.Drinkwater
              Andy.Drinkwater
              0
              7
              165

            • Should we remove our "index" pages (alphabetical link list to all of the products on the site)?
              ChrisRoberts-MTI
              ChrisRoberts-MTI
              1
              3
              102

            • Google penalty having bad sites maybe and working on 1 good site ?!!!
              0
              1
              88

            • Client Selling Links On One Site Hurt Their Other Site?
              RyanKent
              RyanKent
              0
              4
              756

            • Somebody hacked many sites and put links to my sites in hidden div
              KeriMorgret
              KeriMorgret
              0
              7
              1.1k

            • If a site is punished by google like -30, or -60, are the link from that site efficient?
              yifang0123
              yifang0123
              0
              8
              983

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy