: Google is returning non-existent pages in a site: search I help someone run a WordPress blog. When you Google the website, www.plus10tofireresist.com, it comes up stating "This site may be hacked."

@Nickens628

This sounds like a case of cloaking. This is a way to tell one thing to user A and another to user B.

This often happens with porn sites.

The concept is relatively simple: a PHP script gets installed on your website and whenever the site gets a hit, it checks the USER_AGENT parameter. If the USER_AGENT says it's a GoogleBot computer, reply with a 301 redirect to the porn site. Google will register the final URL and eliminate all the 301 in their search results.

Now since Google removes the 301, if you go directly to that page, you get the normal 404 because the PHP script sees your USER_AGENT parameter and you are not browsing like a GoogleBot. This prevents you from noticing unless you check with Google Console (a.k.a. Google Webmaster) or with a search like you've done.

To fix the situation you have to find the PHP script that does that to your website. If you're a programmer, it probably won't be too hard. If you're not, creating a new installation from scratch and copying the data may be the easiest way to fix the problem. However, Wordpress puts a lot of PHP code under the wp-content folder... code that could be doing the cloaking.

There is a page that describes the situation further:
snapwebsites.com/journal/2012/06/snap-seo-what-cloaking-and-why-search-engines-do-not-it

Vote Up Vote Down