blacklisted after Hack attack

[jayzee111]

Hi,

Hope I am posting in the right area, have viewed webamsterworld many times, but this is the first post!

anyway, a client has been informed by a SEO company he uses that because a few months ago his site was hacked into that he could now be blacklisted by google.

I have never heard of this and after looking around WebmasterWorld the closest i have come across is the editing of the robots.txt file and then registering the url to be removed at google, I think that is how it works.

well the site in questions is still listed by google so I can't se that being the issue, so does anyone know what the SEO company could be talking about.

Unfortuantely I was passed this information by the site owner and not directly from the SEO company so it may have lost something on the way as the site owner is not exaclty the most computer literate.

for this reason the client is also worried about being ripped off by the SEO company, so is he being told porkies, or should he belive them?

thanks

J

[bwnbwn]

I highly doubt it Google blacklisting him of course it all depends on what the hackers did or tried to do with the traffic coming inot the site.

When was the hack? How long was it undetected? What was changed? All these are questions needing answering.

Or it may be the SEO company trying to cover up something they did?

[tedster]

the site in questions is still listed by google so I can't se that being the issue

So you are correct, they were not a victim of a robots.txt removal hack -- that would mean a minimum of 6 months not showing, and as your report, they are showing up.

It's hard to know what's actually being said in a conversation that's coming to you second hand. But if the client is not very computer literate, it's unlikely they could invent the robots.txt hack, isn't it?

[abates]

If they were hacked into, the hackers could have put hidden links, etc, on his pages which could cause a Google penalty?

[Reid]

maybe the SEO company is just using scary language with the guy to get him all riled into thinking he needs then to save his site. Did they tell him that if he is indeed 'blacklisted' by google that there is not a damn thing they could do about it or are they selling something?

[jayzee111]

thanks for the feedback.

the client has not mentioned the robots.txt hack, Just my research here on WebmasterWorld that maybe explains what he is tlking about.

the hackers only changed a couple of config files which just replaced the pages with there own splash page. this was a couple of moths back and as soon as the client had realised what had happened they made me aware of the problem and I got rid of the pages and reverted the site back to the original pages. Saying this the splash page was there long enough for google to spider it as it appears in googles search results.

personaly I think it was just a random hack on a security hole in some prebuilt code which has now been sorted out. the client is convinced it is his competition that is trying to wipe him out by getting him blacklisted from google.

thanks again for all the replies
J

[rj87uk]

In my view it may affect some rankings but after several months it should be back to normal. Also I dont think the website in question would pick up a ban / blacklisted.

We had a website vandaled had it sorted within 8hours and it made no difference at all.

[Edge]

Business 101 - Treat everything vendors / salepeople tell you with caution and polite skepticism.