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Phantom outbound links appearing in content??

by liveformusic
6 replies
I am actually an offline marketer, but I figured one of you programming guys might have a better idea of what was going on then those in the offline forum.

I have a Florist client about a year or so, and everything has been fine-up to now. She has a WP 2010 theme and it consistently ranks high.

Well, She called me today and asked why I had put orange links (anchor text) that link out to unrelated external websites? What?.... I asked... (It certainly wasn't on my laptop....)

I went over to her store computer, and sure enough, among the regular (blue) internal links were 5-6 orange outbound links to other sites. The new anchor text was on insignificant words in the content like "offer" "consumer" etc..

One link was going to Living Social, another was going to Consumer Cellular, another was going to 1800flowers (a competitor!). She's wasn't happy, but I told her it's probably only on her computer.

Her computer tower is old and cranky, but I've never seen this happen. Was she hacked? It beats me. I'm just a poor old SEO.

I noticed when you hover over the real internal links- the permalinks in the lower left corner are correct. The bogus links have the correct domain name but have /# (forward slash pound sign) added at the end. Hmmmmm.........

Any ideas? Thanks in advance
#appearing #content #links #outbound #phantom
  • Profile picture of the author David V
    Sounds like a hack. You'll need to clean it up, or restore a backup.
    Not only that, change all passwords.
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    • Profile picture of the author liveformusic
      Thank you, David. That was my best guess. I'll contact her host about restoring a backup.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
    Malware on the store computer, can almost 100% guarantee it has nothing to do with the website. The key here is that you have to go to the store computer to see the links, they don't show on your laptop.
    Signature

    The 2nd Amendment, 1789 - The Original Homeland Security.

    Gun control means never having to say, "I missed you."

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    • Profile picture of the author liveformusic
      Exactly, Steve, but that didn't prevent me from having a panic attack before I realized that that was the case lol. Thanks for your input
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      • Profile picture of the author Andy Bo
        Hi liveformusic,

        I had the same problem and it's malware and adware that is stored in your browser. Its a case of deactivating the add-on in the tools section of your browser and then going to remove programs and removing the offending items.

        Sorry I can't be more help.

        Andy
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