{"id":7255,"date":"2015-02-24T12:37:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T10:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=7255"},"modified":"2018-07-10T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T08:30:11","slug":"defend-against-serp-hijacking-before-you-lose-your-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/7255\/defend-against-serp-hijacking-before-you-lose-your-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"Defend against SERP Hijacking before You Lose Your Rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Site hacking poses a constant threat for webmasters and online business owners.\u00a0Whether you’re just interested about how to deal with hacking, or unfortunately you’ve received a “Notice of suspected hacking” message in Google webmaster tool, in this article I`ll try to give you some tips on how to deal with it and how to even prevent it in the future.\u00a0Even though Google <\/span>does<\/span><\/a>\u00a0what it can to stop spam and SERP Hijacking, black hatters still use this shady tactic to rank up various sites. The hacking can basically go two ways: one is inserting links and keywords pointing to a business the hacker wants to rank higher in and the other is inserting malware with the purpose of infecting end users to gain financial information. This article will tackle the first kind of hacking, the one we call, in the online world, SERP Hijacking<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hijacked<\/p>\n

In this dreaded circumstance, a hacker gains access to your website and inserts keywords and links pointing to his business. Worst of all, these links and keywords are usually hidden form the webmasters and the website looks the same way they\u2019re used to see it day after day. Only after accessing the pages from the SERPs a totally different website will be displayed, the one inserted by the hacker. This leads to huge loses in traffic and can even bring your own website a Google penalty and will give you a lot of work to do in order to recover from the damages. Luckily there are ways to catch the hacking before it does enough damage and even before Google takes note of it and starts throwing penalties left and right.<\/p>\n

\"Lost<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why Is “Hacking Sites for Rankings” Such a Profitable Business?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Even though Google wages a constant war on hacking with constant <\/span>algorithm updates<\/a>, hacking for rankings is still used today. And why is it so often used? Unfortunately, because it works. Simply take a look at the Google search results for highly competitive words like: buy Viagra, buy Cialis or payday loans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hacked<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n

As you can see for yourself, from the first 5 results, 3 of them are hosted illegally on servers that have nothing to do with Cialis. They latch onto high authority and innocent domains to climb the search engine ladder.<\/p>\n

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Due to the illegal nature of this technique, most people began to call these hackers, crap hatters.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This kind of hacking is very appealing to black hatters<\/del>\u00a0crap hatters. Clicking the results will redirect users to completely different pages through the help of a cloaking script with clever HTTP_REFERER identification.As stated before, the problem here is that the webmaster will access the hacked site only through the search results page. This could lead to a late detection of the hacking which, in turn, will lead to loss of traffic and potential Google penalties.<\/p>\n

Only after a closer inspection of the URL can we\u00a0see that the domains don’t have anything remotely related to drugs:<\/p>\n

\"Candlelighters<\/p>\n

This technique is called Parasite Hosting<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and it’s defined as hosting a webpage on someone’s server without their consent. The hackers usually target high authority domains that rank really well in Google. The websites point to a certain site that they wish to promote and boost their position in the SERPs<\/strong><\/a>. As the name suggests, these pages are parasites, feeding on the high authority earned by other websites in Google.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Luckily, Google is working hard to fix this issue. Their latest payday loans\u00a0update<\/a> <\/strong>took things down a notch, but there is still a big delay between the indexing of the hacked site and the moment Google uncovers the scheme. Hackers who use this technique still reap the benefits of raking in the top 10 of the SERPs as Google just can’t detect them right away. In the end, they will be uncovered, and penalties will be applied.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You will always find this technique used together with other types of black hat SEO strategies for a better performance. They do have the power to influence rankings on their own, but if one goes through the trouble of hacking a children cancer foundation website, you can be sure other types of black hats techniques are used to promote their business.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another black hat tactic that goes hand in hand with parasite hosting is Google Bombing<\/strong>. This technique is not at least new as it was first encountered in 1999 when a search for \u201cmore evil than Satan himself\u201d provided in the SERPs the Microsoft homepage as the no. 1 result. A simple definition for Google bombing is heavily linking with the same anchor text, from many domains to the same URL. This will result in increased rankings for the link on the desired keyword. Google bombing quickly evolved from a simple prank to an often used black hat technique to boost rankings for some websites.<\/p>\n

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Google tries to stop Google Bombing\u00a0from working, but black hatters still use it to their advantage these days.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let’s take an example and see how it performed together with parasite hosting:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

As you can see from the screenshot, this URL has zero history, which shows that it’s a new page, and yet in the last days it has generated huge spikes of new links. This seems abnormal, a more in-depth look at the domain’s past link gain is required.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

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The website has a strong, constant link building tactics, starting from 2008. The domain build a solid authority making it a perfect target for some black hat\u00a0action. The last 90 days graph on the right raises suspicion since in only a couple of months it gained thousands of links. Let’s take a look from where the links come from:<\/p>\n

\"Parasite<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The newly generated links are actually parasite doorways. Doorways to the landing pages of drug stores for Viagra actually. What this kind of action does is two things:<\/p>\n