My site was hacked and spammy URLs were injected that pointed out. The issue was fixed, but GWT is still reporting more of these links.

[jampaper]

Excuse me for posting this here, I wasn't having much luck going through GWT support.

We recently moved our eCommerce site to a new server and in the process the site was hacked. Spammy URLs were injected in, all of which were pointing outwards to some spammy eCommerce retail stores. I removed ~4,000 of these links, but more continue to pile in. As you can see, there are now over 20,000 of these links. Note that our server support team does not see these links anywhere.

I understand that Google doesn't generally view this as a problem. But is that true given my circumstance? I cannot imagine that 20,000 new, senseless 404's can be healthy for my website.

If I can't get a good response here, would anyone know of a direct Google support email or number I can use for this issue?

[Bryan_Loconto]

Can you please be more specific.

[jampaper]

Ha, sorry about the initial test post. It wasn't publishing on my main computer at first.

[maestrosonrisas]

Samething happened to me a last month due to a securrity break in a pluggin that was part of my wordpress theme.

After hacked the site with injected url and also altering htaccess file (check that out) they changed the htacces file in order that if you enter your url you could see the correct version of your web, but if you enter your website in a google search traffic wen to this spammy viagra stuff pages.

I also recieved a manual action on my site.

What i did:

1- removed the injected files that were creating the spammy urls

2- edited the htacces file locating what code they had changed

3- summited a reconsideration request explaining what it was happening

4- Removed on webmaster tools al url that were spammy created on my site to remove them from google index

After 10 days manual action was removed. But till know i still have spammy links to 404 on my site. This happens because they also hacked other sites and creates like spammy linking networks. Has people start recovering their sites the amount of links to this pages will reduce.

My experience this big amount on 404 it has affected on about 30% of traffic. This traffic has know recovered almost completly and the amount on 404 is reducing with time.

So my conclusion is that this 404 are not healthy but they will be gone with time and your site will recover.

[Shakur]

Hi there,

Here you can find some direct numbers: http://www.wikihow.com/Contact-Google

Good luck

[jampaper]

Thank you for your response.

I also believe I was hacked through my wordpress. What exactly did you do once you realized the htaccess file was changed? Did you change it back to whatever code was there before?

I already submitted a reconsideration request to Google and it was successful. I no longer have "this site may be hacked" in the SERPs, but I still have thousands of urls pointing to 404 pages.

[DennisSeymour]

Since those URLs are already gone after you cleaned it up, you can just mark those as fixed. GWT usually is pretty late with picking those up. I've handled my share of hacked sites, some with invisible links.

If they appear again, then you'll need to find where they are getting through. It's a pain but you have to fully check your files for scripts and encrypted codes.

Aside from those, it's just time. Google will eventually stop showing them.

Good luck Andrew!

PS. You might want to look at some of your pages using Google's cache result. You can see invisible links using that. Just in case you haven't done this part.

[jampaper]

I don't understand why more spam links would be coming in though. Is it because the spam network doesn't realize that I've removed the injected pages? In other words, are they unknowingly linking to 404s?

[DennisSeymour]

Hi

Yeah, lets say they use Xrumer.

They hack your site, insert pages of their own, and links on your pages.

They put those urls in text files based on their keyword targets/groups.

They run the software, using those list with their link sources and using their auto insert random url template.

So that pings a 404 to GWT so the 404 shows up there.

If these are pros, they already know that the pages are dead by now, as they confirm links after each run. It just takes a bit more time for GWMT to get notified so you'll see them trickle in.

So you'll see those 404 pages getting links from different dates.

Hope that helps