Site was hacked, now no Google traffic

[apauto]

My site got hacked by a spineless coward, and had javascript injection making people download a PDF.

Now, all Google traffic has stopped.

When I do a "site:" I get next to all my results:

"Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!"

The hack/virus was cleaned up, will this go away? What do I need to do?

Thanks guys

[tedster]

Rankings will come back eventually, but you can sometimes speed things along by following the steps for Malware Reviews [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com], outlined on Google's Webmaster blog.

The key is not only to remove the injected content but also to fix the security hole that allowed the hack to happen in the first place. Otherwise, another hacker can come along and do more damage.

In a "funny" way, your hacker did you a service by creating a malware injection, because once Google caught it, the message you got was dramatic and clear. If they had injected parasite links that were cloaked only for googlebot, all you might have noticed for a long time was lost rankings. It can take a lot of detective work to find some of today's nastier parasite hosting.

[edited by: tedster at 4:32 pm (utc) on Jul 5, 2010]

[Pudders]

Depending on how your site was hacked, you may wish to contact your hosting site to make sure they have no vulnerability issues on the hosting server.

I have just had this happen to me and after a few emails back and forth to my hosting site... they found a problem and fixed it!

[JoeHouse]

This is very helpful information. My question is why doesn't google realize that it is quite possibly a hack? Why the penalty and drop in rankings without an notice?

Our company is a top notch reputable well known organization nationwide that is rated A+ by The Better Business Bureau.

Doesn't Google consider this before they hit you with such a severe penalty?

We cannot afford to be so down in rankings for months. This must get resolve within weeks!

[jimbeetle]

This is very helpful information. My question is why doesn't google realize that it is quite possibly a hack? Why the penalty and drop in rankings without an notice?

Google does realize this. That's why it takes the steps it does in order to protect its users.

And Google does try to notify you through both e-mail and, if you have one, your Webmaster Tools account.

When you stop to think about it, Google has no obligation to tell you anything, just let you keep going thinking everything is peach keen when every visitor to your site comes away infected.

[bunltd]

We had a client get hacked a few weeks ago, determined the cause, fixed things then used the Malware Review process - the site was back in the SERPS (without the malware warning) in a little over 24 hours.

(the site didn't quit ranking, the issue was spotted quickly since the site owner frequently checks rankings and saw the warning.)

(of course, we gave an explanation of what was found, what was done - not just a generic "it's fixed" - I believe that helps.)