Spam Titles in Google Search Results

  • If you go to Google and type in the search parameters “evangelical outpost 33 things” you’ll notice that the search results that point directly to the site I’m updating all contain the title “- Order Online, get discount” or something of that manner.

    I’ve flushed out all spam comments (not just marking them spam) and I still seem to get these in the search results.

    Is this a common comment hack that I need to patch in some manner?

    Do I need to use Google Webmaster Tools to resubmit the site for spidering to get those titles to go away?

    Many thanks in advance!

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

  • If you’re absolutely sure you’ve cleaned the site up, it should just be a case of waiting. As Google crawls your site, the titles will get updated. Might take a few weeks though. Your site hasn’t been excluded, so you don’t need to submit a re-consideration request.

    In the mean time, go through these links to make double sure that you’re now squeaky clean:
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked
    https://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/06/24/how-to-completely-clean-your-hacked-wordpress-installation/

    Most sites seem to get hacked due to running an out of date version of WordPress. But that’s not the only cause. Malware on your PC could steal your login details, you might have another insecure script within your webspace, you might just have a really lousy host etc etc.

    If you’re running the latest version of everything you should be ok, but it wouldn’t hurt to action some of this too:
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Hardening_WordPress

    Thread Starter dillie-o

    (@dillie-o)

    Thanks for the links! I’ve got some more reading to do. Even some of the newer posts are getting cached with the spam titles, so there’s gotta be something lingering in the css or what the robots are generating.

    One of my sites got hacked and had these odd search results too. I didn’t find any more help on fixing it than the people above provided, but here is some info I found useful to understand what in the world is going on.

    The hackers apparently install code that does “cloaking” (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking). It recognizes when a search engine spider, like Googlebot, is crawling the site and gives it a different version of the web page (e.g. one filled with Rx drug ads). This facilitates so-called “spamdexing.” You can see the different ways the site is being rendered by using a “cloaking detector” (see, for example: https://www.cloakingdetector.com/).

    Hope that helps. It sure helped me understand some of what happened to me!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Spam Titles in Google Search Results’ is closed to new replies.