Site got hacked = Massive amount of traffic

12 years ago

WOW! I'm having a very similar problem with my sites, but have been too
overwhelmed to clean them up. You've just inspired me!

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TolyZ

12 years ago

The only thing that worries me is now my site receives 1000s of visitors for unrelated keywords. Will this effect my rankings, anyone know? I guess google likes variety so here we go lol

Note: I redirected my 404 page to a different website that is monetized.

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Joseph Robinson

Banned 12 years ago

It might have been a competitor who was looking to bring your site down by inserting a thousand pages of unrelated crap. Guess it didn't work though. That extra traffic (that I'm assuming is unrelated) isn't going to do much for you though.

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TolyZ

12 years ago

^ I figured as much. Still kind of stupid in my opinion.

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Kal Sallam

12 years ago

It shouldn't affect your rankings, but this is really interesting.
There has to be something behind I presume, how were you able to find your pages?

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TolyZ

12 years ago

I saw jump in traffic and knew that it wasn't possible, because that site was targeting low monthly searches. I looked at my statistics and found that the traffic was going to a "network" folder on my hosting. Logged it to my FTP and there it was, 9000+ pages. Simple HTML pages that target long tail keywords. Animal pictures, Computer parts etc. At first I deleted them, but whoever hacked it uploaded a script, so when that happens it downloads them again and re-uploads. I found a script, removed it, changed my passwords, reinstalled wordpress, theme, looked through database for anything suspious and cleaned everything. Now it's all good, but traffic is still coming. It'll die as soon as google realizes that those pages are not there anymore.

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eternalwarrior

12 years ago

Build an email list from those traffic

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1 reply

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taskemann 12 years ago

Originally Posted by eternalwarrior

Build an email list from those traffic

If he tries to build a list with that traffic, it will still be untargeted..:rolleyes:

Edit:

Originally Posted by TolyZ

^ I tried to, but the conversion is 0 to none.

You see EternalWarrior?
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TolyZ

12 years ago

^ I tried to, but the conversion is 0 to none.

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TolyZ

12 years ago

^ Yes, I see him lol That traffic needs to convert like right noooowwww

It's so untargeted it's not even funny.
Some keywords:
cannabis royal cheese
desert eagle 50 cal
graphic organizers for writing
pictures of the desert of the animals

What can you offer to those people???

I think I'm going to write about 200 articles for my niche and post them on my blog targeting long tail kewords and see if I can get the same amount of traffic.

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firzmotion

12 years ago

well someone try to play dirty, Why would someone send fake traffic to your blog:
Hijack your blog’s ranking.
Hurt your blog stats.
Disable your blog by exceed your hosting bandwidth quota.
Disable your shared hosting account for extensive use of CPU resources.
Get your Google AdSense account suspended (Read: Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center).
Affect your business reputation and integrity.
And, more…

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nonin

12 years ago

somebody is trying to bypass your walls...

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TolyZ

12 years ago

Well the traffic is not fake, it comes from google. That site has only 10-15 pages, no google adsense since I got banned from it long time ago + I don't think it would hurt my google adsense even if I had it because all the traffic was going to those pages. It's really weird

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Karen Blundell 12 years ago

TolyZ, was the site a WordPress site?

if so, here's the lesson in this thread:

you can leave a static HTML site abandoned, and generally nothing will happen to the site. However, you can't leave a WordPress site abandoned. You have to upgrade it and tighten up the security constantly. Whenver there;'s a new version of WordPress, always upgrade it, because open source software is vulnerable, and their many upgrades usually address these security issues.

I hope you have changed all your passwords too.

it's very weird about the traffic, but as firzmotion mentioned, it looks like someone wanted to ruin you - competitor?

good luck in the future!
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TolyZ

12 years ago

Yeah, it was wordpress. The niche really has 0 competitors, I mean literally 0 to none+ my site wasn't competitive at all. It's just a 10-15 page site that I created long time ago when I was starting my IM carreer.

My main question is, can you get penalized if you get traffic from unrelated keywords?

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taskemann

12 years ago

Originally Posted by TolyZ

Yeah, it was wordpress. The niche really has 0 competitors, I mean literally 0 to none+ my site wasn't competitive at all. It's just a 10-15 page site that I created long time ago when I was starting my IM carreer.

My main question is, can you get penalized if you get traffic from unrelated keywords?

"There are 8 “specific guidelines”. They are (verbatim):

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.

4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.

7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first."

Read more here: Google Penguin Update: 12 Tips Directly From Google | WebProNews

If you load your page with irrelevant keywords, yes. If not, I doubt.

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tpw

12 years ago

I had this happen one time to one of my small local websites that was expected to only get a few dozen visitors a month.

I would probably had never noticed, except the hacker used my primary WordPress Title tag, which had my phone number in it.

My phone went from 2 phone calls per month to 100+ a day, at all hours of the day and night.

The people on the other end of those phone calls were looking for everything from nail polish, clothing, funny t-shirts, car parts, small kitchen appliances, flower arrangements, jobs, dating sites, gay phone chat, and much much more...

Imagine my freak out when that number was only for local seo services!!

I cleaned everything up, and the phone calls kept rolling in.... Why? Because although my site was cleaned up, my phone number was still attached to over 13,000 Google listings. People would click through to my site, get the 404, then go back to Google and call my number!!

I eventually suspended the domain, to notify Google to get my phone number out of their listings!!

After suspending the domain, the phone calls started winding down, and at the end of 7 days, the phone calls finally stopped.

But, the experience taught me that if I could replicate something like that on my own, then I could probably make a killing on Pay Per Call lead generation.

[ 1 ] Thanks

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TolyZ

12 years ago

Yeah, I understand that, but my questions is still not answered.

I deleted all the pages, so when they search for something like "nail polish" and click on search results it automatically redirects them to my homepage because that page is not there, so in statistics it shows as I'm getting traffic from the keyword "nail polish" to my homepage.
Will this hurt my rankings?

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taskemann

12 years ago

Originally Posted by TolyZ

Yeah, I understand that, but my questions is still not answered.

I deleted all the pages, so when they search for something like "nail polish" and click on search results it automatically redirects them to my homepage because that page is not there, so in statistics it shows as I'm getting traffic from the keyword "nail polish" to my homepage.
Will this hurt my rankings?

It sounds like Google doesn't have indexed your "empty" page/pages yet. No this will not hurt your rankings. Only when Google index those "empty" pages again because it's empty!

You'll not getting penalized for that.

If you have the article / articles on your computer or a backup of them, I would recommend you to post it again with the same headline in the same folder as the old ones.

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1 reply

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tpw

12 years ago

Originally Posted by TolyZ

Yeah, I understand that, but my questions is still not answered.

I deleted all the pages, so when they search for something like "nail polish" and click on search results it automatically redirects them to my homepage because that page is not there, so in statistics it shows as I'm getting traffic from the keyword "nail polish" to my homepage.
Will this hurt my rankings?

Originally Posted by taskemann

It sounds like Google doesn't have indexed your "empty" page/pages yet. No this will not hurt your rankings. Only when Google index those "empty" pages again because it's empty!

You'll not getting penalized for that.

If you have the article / articles on your computer or a backup of them, I would recommend you to post it again with the same headline in the same folder as the old ones.

The only thing I would do different than you did would be to redirect those 404 errors to a 404 page, instead of your home page.

Could redirecting a 404 to your home page hurt your rankings? Maybe, but I doubt it.

But to be safe, I would definitely redirect that traffic to a custom 404 page.

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Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)

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Karen Blundell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by tpw

The only thing I would do different than you did would be to redirect those 404 errors to a 404 page, instead of your home page.

Could redirecting a 404 to your home page hurt your rankings? Maybe, but I doubt it.

But to be safe, I would definitely redirect that traffic to a custom 404 page.

yes, and I would put an affiliate offer on that 404 page too...might as well try and get some leverage out of it

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andersvinther

12 years ago

Sounds like a good free ride... however with the Google changes these days who knows what's gonna hurt your rankings...

But given the niche has 0 competitors I wouldn't worry...

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ryuchi

12 years ago

...and that was a blessing in disguise! I wonder if you can add up adsense in it? Untargeted traffic won't be much of use but they might be interested to click on ads if there is some.

Ryuchi

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John Romaine

12 years ago

Cleaning up your site and flushing those pages - you did the right thing.

Good on you.

A lot of people probably would've stuffed those pages with useless ads.

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dodif

12 years ago

Cool! Insert Adsense to your website.. If you're website has 1000 views per day you can earn nice money

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1 reply

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John Romaine 12 years ago

Originally Posted by dodif

Cool! Insert Adsense to your website.. If you're website has 1000 views per day you can earn nice money

see above dodo head.
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brotherdaniel

12 years ago

Strange, haven'tougth much about security for my sites, but I will go over it again.. What could you have done differently to protect yourself?

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Prowebstakht

12 years ago

oh man this is an interesting read....why would a hacker do such a thing?

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TCrosby

12 years ago

It seems obvious to me why they might want to do such a thing.

If they had some malicious javascript that infects viewers with something beneficial to the attacker, than it also benefits the attacker for as many viewers as possible to reach your site.

So he finds a site that the admin hasn't touched in a long time. He writes some script that installs a trojan or the like in viewers computers, then he loads content to get your site 1000s of viewers to get infected.

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1 reply

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Blame It On The Caffeine

12 years ago

Originally Posted by TCrosby

It seems obvious to me why they might want to do such a thing.

If they had some malicious javascript that infects viewers with something beneficial to the attacker, than it also benefits the attacker for as many viewers as possible to reach your site.

So he finds a site that the admin hasn't touched in a long time. He writes some script that installs a trojan or the like in viewers computers, then he loads content to get your site 1000s of viewers to get infected.

so in other words, when he fixed his site, somewhere in the world, someone else just lost his Fiverr gig for youtube views and FB 'likes' blasts?

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lwr

12 years ago

I am facing the same problem here , my bussines site has only 30-40 unique visitors / day wich is okey in my niche but suddently i recevie massive traffic ( 1000-1200 / day ) not from google , fake traffic . Is there any way to stop this ? I am only worried for rankings , because soon after this began i lost some rankings for top of my keywords ( 2-3 positions ) , not sure if this is the problem but it can be i think...

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matrimoniale

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JC Alexandre

12 years ago

Hi a security consultant

end of story

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Site got hacked = Massive amount of traffic

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