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How to Resolve Rankings Drop from a DDOS Attack?

by jello66
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Our rankings just plummeted on Tuesday across the board. Pages are still indexed, but dropped very far down in the SERPs.


There was a DDOS attack on the site on Tuesday and since then the rankings went down and have stayed down, even though the DDOS attack has been resolved.



Also, this is the 3rd or 4th attack this site has seen this year. Rankings did not go down after the previous attacks. Maybe Google is sick of the site being uncrawlable so often?



How long could this penalty last? How can we deal with this?


Thanks
#attack #ddos #drop #rankings #resolve
  • Profile picture of the author RevSEO
    You gotta keep your site up, Google hates it when websites go down.
    It provides a bad user experience from Google's perspective.

    Can you switch to a better hosting company that can combat the DDOS
    attacks?
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  • Profile picture of the author usearchme2
    Hi there

    have had it happen a few times, and my serps disapear, usually they come back within a few days though.

    Ste
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    • Profile picture of the author caseycase
      Originally Posted by usearchme2 View Post

      Hi there

      have had it happen a few times, and my serps disapear, usually they come back within a few days though.

      Ste
      Agreed. Site will likely come back after a few days if you don't get hit again. And Rev is right - switch hosts if you can!
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      Free IM Info, No Junk - http://www.ironcladim.com



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  • Profile picture of the author SuzanneH
    I could be wrong, but in this forum and another one, I've been seeing a few "traffic plummeted" posts for around the 29th. Makes me wonder if there was another Panda tweak... Was it specifically Google organic search traffic that you lost?

    Suzanne
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    • Profile picture of the author jello66
      Yes, it was strictly Google organic. Not really any drop in Bing, Yahoo, referral, direct, etc.
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      • Profile picture of the author jello66
        It's been 3 days and rankings have only gone down more. I've submitted a reconsideration request to Google letting them know we've strengthened our firewall security to prevent such attacks in the future, but I'm not hopeful....
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  • Profile picture of the author WillieMJoiner
    This shouldn't last long at all. Give it a few days to recover. If the site has been down for a few days it will take a little time for Google to put it back in the index.
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    • Profile picture of the author jello66
      Well, that's actually part of the reason I am worried. The site was only down a few hours on Tuesday.
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  • Profile picture of the author cagliostro
    I regurarly update my small empire and websites stay down for a few hours. I have never seen any drop related to a brief interuption.

    Are you sure that your attach is the reason ?
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    • Profile picture of the author jello66
      Originally Posted by cagliostro View Post

      I regurarly update my small empire and websites stay down for a few hours. I have never seen any drop related to a brief interuption.

      Are you sure that your attach is the reason ?
      Google rankings/org.traffic was consistent for months up until the site went down Tuesday for just a few hours. Site went back up, traffic had plummeted and at least 95% of our keyword terms decreased, dropping between 1-40+ positions. There were no major changes made to the site around the 29th, so, I don't see how it could be caused by something else.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cosmo Demopoulos
    I'm moving sitesfrom a hosting providers for exactly this reason - DDOS attacks (often holiday weekends). I'm sympathetic, but got a business to run.
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    Wine - bubbles and more
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