Wordfence removed but still somehow active

  • Resolved escaladieu

    (@escaladieu)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    I have completely removed wordpress from my server but somehow word fence is still active. I’m having problems with Google reporting urls like this: https://www.mysite.com/?wordfence_lh=1&hid=75E8A064C2C1418CA3E797AB0EE720E6

    I’ve tried everything to solve this problem but I cannot. WordPress is removed, the SQL database removed, I have added the following to .htaccess: php_value auto_prepend_file none, there is no user.ini in the document root ….

    I don’t understand where these URLs are being generated: there is no wordpress & no wordfence anymore!

    Any help appreciated

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @escaladieu, thanks for reaching out.

    If you’ve completed all steps in our remove/reset page, which it sounds like you have, these are probably legacy URLs that Google has crawled in the past. They usually appear in Google because a plugin or theme was redirecting URLs that don’t exist on your site (like 404s) to the homepage or another custom page. Google will eventually work out that these are no longer useful and they should be purged in time.

    Note that we used to recommend adding wordfence_lh and hid to the list of parameters that Google can ignore, but it looks like that feature has been removed from Google Search Console: https://searchengineland.com/google-search-consoles-url-parameter-tool-is-officially-not-working-383828

    Thanks,
    Peter.

    Thread Starter escaladieu

    (@escaladieu)

    Thanks for your response. I’ve satisfied myself that the URLs are still being generated, by using a website analysis tool. It retrieves them, and Google does too. But I’m stumped as to how they are generated. WordPress and Wordfence have been removed, I’m preventing any PHP initialise scripts from running, and blocking parameterised URLs in .htaccess. It’s problematic as these URLs are seen as duplicates, which affects SEO. I’ve now blocked parameterised URLs in robots.txt which I’m hoping will resolve it. I see from Google that others have this problem too. Do you have any insights?

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @escaladieu, thanks for the extra information and checks you’ve made.

    Because our Live Traffic URLs are query parameters after the site URL, if Google or any other links exist to them, they may still resolve at your site even after Wordfence’s removal but the parameters just won’t do anything because Wordfence isn’t there looking for them any more.

    Google does drop them over time if it realises they’re no longer useful to crawl, but it can take a little time.

    Thanks again,
    Peter.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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