rros - 6:00 pm on Sep 3, 2009 (gmt 0)

Here's a solid analysis of a particularly devious hack - offered by Google's John Mueller (JohnMu): [webmasterworld.com...] Let's discuss the specifics of that hack in the linked thread, rather than here - thanks.

I missed this thread and the one you pointed about John.

But still would like to contribute if possible...

That site John talked about belonged to me. If it helps, here is some information. The server got hacked, not the website. It happened in August 2006. Within 1 week Google completely de-indexed the entire site. De-indexing is really nasty as you see your site disappearing from DCs one at a time and you hurry to check another one only to see live the site disappearing in front of your very own eyes (as you do site:--- you see less and less pages by the hour). Noone from Google would give the slighest hint of the problem. Complete silence. Six months into the problem, John (pre-Google) finally spotted what was happening. He was able to replicate calling the urls of the site *as if* from a Google serp and indeed only the 1st hit produced that redirect when clicking the results (I had to clean my temp, flush dns and repair IP to be able to see the redirect again). The redirect was to a site selling none other than anti-virus software. I believe a site in Russia. Pressumably, this was done so that the owner of the site would think it was just a temporary malfunction. Astute hacking is an understatement.

The real problem had been that some binaries from Apache had been changed and went undetected. Upon contacting the hosting company -they wouldn't even apologize- they said they forgot to upgrade Apache on that particular server, so as Tedster mentioned, patches and regular upgrades/updates are essential. Hacks of this nature are very damaging. Only 1 individual was able to detect it. After 2 trips to Chicago and personally meeting with Google's spam team, the site would not come back. So if you are a victim of this you are in trouble. Google may still have doubts about who you really are. This hack would in essence steal Google's traffic and mess up with the user. I wouldn't be surprised if this would cause the people at Google to hate you for eternity.

When all was said and done, after moving to another hosting and upgrading the site from plain vanilla to something as close as possible to a web 2.0 website with custom scripts and custom content, the site got back in the index. But it still remains a lackluster and to this day it has only gain a small fraction of the traffic it had when it was deindexed. Perhaps, there are some penalties that never go away -I think Brett Tabke mentioned something like this regarding banned sites- or it may just be that Google is not ready to believe your story and doubts linger on. So, in cases this problematic the best may just be to start a new site from scratch and move on. As quickly as you can!

On hindsight, that would have been the cleverest decision. As time passes by and when finally your site comes back most likely it is a dinosaur. A Rip Van Winkle that wakes up in another era. So now you have a new, different problem which is that Google doesn't like you and considers you obsolete. Another reason to quickly begin anew with a vision into the future.