Website hacked - robots blocked googlebot - has this affected ads?

hacked website, google adsense

[zarathustra2011]

When I heard about lots of people having problems with blank ads on the 20th January, I assumed my problem was the same, but now it seems that was just a red herring. My website was hacked on the 20th January, and the devils who did it added new directories such as kids-boots, ugg-boots, along with ASP pages and code.
They hadn't changed my website itself, but I noticed my robots file had been changed, and all search engine bots were blocked. I've since changed it, along with all my passwords.
If the robots file was manipulated on the 20th January, might it have taken 3 days to take affect? I noticed a 50% drop in traffic on the 23rd January. Would the block also mean google is unable to target my website, hence why many of my pages were unable to feature any adverts? For the pages that still worked, would that be because those pages were still in google's cache? Also, does anyone know how often Google typical checks a robots file, so I have a rough idea when things may hopefully go back to normal?

[eddieh]

I would also recommend that you check your site(s) regularly over the next few weeks to make sure that the hack doesn't re-occur. They got in once and depending how they accessed the server, they could well get in again.

I had something similar happen a couple of years ago where every site that I had hosted on a server all suffered from something called an Iframe attack. In that instance, they added code to the index.php and/or index.html file in the root of every domain which resulted in blank pages being served instead of the site index page. Once I discovered the problem, it was just a case of going through every index file and deleting the added line of code.

However,they didn't just do it the one time. Over the course of a week or so, the index files were changed at least once and sometimes twice a day. Each time I had to go through each site and remove the rogue code. Numerous others on the same server suffered the same fate as well. The hosting company never did say how the hacker got into the server but come back they did - numerous times. It only ended when all domains on that server were shifted to another.

[zarathustra2011]

Play_Bach - it took just 3 days for my traffic to be trashed, it would be nice if it was restored in 3 days, but I guess I just have to be patient. Somebody told me you can contact google and tell them if your site has been hacked, and they can reindex it. They also said to make sure your site is squeaky clean as google will go through it with a fine tooth comb. I've no idea how true that is, or even how it's possible. I've nothing dodgy on my site, so if it transpires to be true, it's an avenue worth exploring.

Thanks Eddieh - I will be keeping a close eye on things, and am checking my FTP regularly to see if any new files/modifications have been made without my knowing. I contacted the hosting company, but they couldn't offer me much advice.

[eddieh]

You could try running your site through the following to see how Google sees your site at present. Replace the siteurl with your own domain name.

google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://siteurl

There are some other links on the results page with some suggestions from G as to what to do if your site is hacked.

[Play_Bach]

Hopefully, your site will get back sooner than later. I'm just saying I've seen it go the other way. My hunch is that search engines see site changes as suspect - "could be a spammer, let's put it at the bottom of the pile for a few months" kind of rationale. Good luck!

[zarathustra2011]

Thanks for the link. Fortunately the hackers put no nasties on there in terms of malware, and they didn't manipulate the existing pages themselves (other than to replace my robots.txt). Their extra pages and manipulation of the robots.txt has put my 4 most popular keywords as something completely irrelevant to my website, and also if I click on 'crawl errors' and click on the link 'restricted by robots' it lists every one of my pages as being restricted by robots as of the 23rd January.
My site is still findable on google of course, but visitor numbers have reached an all time low today, with almost 80% drop in numbers and earnings.
I've set the crawl rate to maximum, and am desperately hoping google will reindex everything soon. I built the site back in 2004, and have maintained a top position on many keywords ever since.

[zarathustra2011]

Fingers crossed, things may already be on the up. Still way down on what I might usually expect in terms of earnings and visitors for this time of day, but it's a big improvement on yesterday. I'm coming up top on some of the keyword searches again, but not all.

[ThatsBoBo]

You'll get back on top.

Did you find out how they got in and close the hole?

[zarathustra2011]

Definitely an improvement today, and hopefully it will return to where it was. ThatsBoBo, I'd love to know how they did it. I don't know what the technical term for it is, but I'm guessing they did a brute force attack, and threw a lot of keyword / number combinations at it. Either that or they've some how managed to access a config.php file, as I think I might have had a database password the same as my FTP password. I've used different, more sophisticated passwords for everything now, but without knowing how it was done, I will have be checking for any modifications on a daily basis.