404s pharma links in Google Search Console

  • Resolved morris4ever69

    (@morris4ever69)


    3 years, 6 months ago

    In Google Search Console I found some 404 page not found errors related to pharma links like:

    mysite.com/order-adipex-denver
mysite.com/mexican-valium
mysite.com/buy-cheap-2mg-xanax

    If I inspect the links, GSC says that the referral link is always a random page of my website. The most part of the links are generated by WooCommerce when the products are filtered, like these:

    mysite.com/shop/?filter_size=36,38,40,52,54&filter_sleeve=3-4,long
mysite.com/shop/?filter_color=white,white-navy,blue&query_type_color=or&filter_shoes=woman-shoes&filter_size=35-36,38-39,43-44

    Inspecting these pages, there is not any trace of the pharma links, browsing them with Googlebot user agent.

    I searched for the common pharma hack files, database data and php code but (at the moment) I have not found anything suspect.

    Do you have any suggestion? Some places (files, database location, etc.) to check? Thank you for your help!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support Stuart Duff – a11n

    (@stuartduff)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    Hi @morris4ever69,

    With Google, you could use a robots.txt file on your server to prevent it from indexing certain URLs on your site. Using a wildcard of ?filter_size* may work.

    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/robots_txt

    Thread Starter morris4ever69

    (@morris4ever69)

    Thank you for your suggestion but of course I would like to know the reason why there are these “ghost” spam links inside my website.

    It seems they are injected in some way but it’s difficult to identify the source. Automatic scan with security tools, manual review of theme and plugins, reinstall WordPress folders wp-admin and wp-includes.. nothing helped to identify the problem.

    It’s strange that the spam links are 404s, no one it’s a valid page, so there is no advantage to hack a website and spam with this technique. Am I wrong?

    I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but my website lost quite a lot of positions in Google, more or less from the moment these 404s appeared in Search Console.

    Plugin Support Stuart Duff – a11n

    (@stuartduff)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    Hi @morris4ever69,

    The links you referenced within your initial message to us which are the ones below are not links that the free WooCommerce plugin is adding.

    
mysite.com/order-adipex-denver
mysite.com/mexican-valium
mysite.com/buy-cheap-2mg-xanax

    These could be originating from another plugin or theme on your site. Or your website/hosting server could have been compromised in some way allowing someone to add code that is inserting those links. It’s not something we could directly offer guidance on though as we can only assist with the default features of the free WooCommerce plugin itself.

    Thread Starter morris4ever69

    (@morris4ever69)

    OK, thank you.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by morris4ever69.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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