Mysterious crawl errors in Webmaster Tools

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waltz1of3
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Mysterious crawl errors in Webmaster Tools

Post by waltz1of3 » Fri Sep 16, 2016 1:08 am

HI

I've got a joomla website - supremedance.co.nz - (just upgrade to 3.6.2) and have been experiencing security problems. I had no idea there was a problem until I was going through Webmaster Tools.

First I noticed that under Manual actions my site had be posted as Hacked, no mention of this under Security Rules.

I did the site:supremedance.co.nz command and found 20 or so spurious internal links that had nothing to do with my website. I have removed these urls using Webmaster Tools.

Then I noticed that I had a 20 or so Soft 404 Crawl Errors and 150 Not Found errors. All spurious internal links.

Have searched my files on the database and server files, but could find nothing.

Have changed passwords and restored the server files. All crawl error vanished. Hooray!

Today they have returned

1. soft 404 ie category/madori/washroom

2. Not founds (please see attachment.

Does anyone have any ideas what is causing this? I not very experienced, please let me know what else I should add.
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fcoulter
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Re: Mysterious crawl errors in Webmaster Tools

Post by fcoulter » Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:17 am

waltz1of3 wrote:HI

First I noticed that under Manual actions my site had be posted as Hacked, no mention of this under Security Rules.
Can you give more information about this? What exactly was the message?

There is no obvious sign that your site has been hacked, see https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/supremedance.co.nz for example, your site does not appear to be blacklisted or displaying malware.

Some odd looking crawl errors do not really imply that your site has been hacked, although it is possible that it might be a symptom, but then again it might not.

Either way, if you have been hacked, removing the URLs from Google webmaster tools would do absolutely nothing to clear it up, although changing your passwords is a good start.

If you think nevertheless that you have been hacked then review the information here https://docs.joomla.org/Security_Checkl ... or_defaced and use the forum post assistant
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waltz1of3
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Re: Mysterious crawl errors in Webmaster Tools

Post by waltz1of3 » Sat Sep 24, 2016 10:07 pm

Hi fcoulter,

Thank you for your reply.

Google has reviewed my reconsideration request and stated that all is well. Hopefully this is true. Possibly the hacked status came from the fact I was hacked a few months ago. I resolved it by a back up and removing the hackers authorisation from Google Webmaster Tools.

I take great heart from the fact that you stated the presence of crawl errors doesn't mean that my website is currently hacked.

I was wondering can you shed any light on what can cause these errors and if there is anything I can do to prevent them.

Thanks

Waltz1of3

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Re: Mysterious crawl errors in Webmaster Tools

Post by fcoulter » Sun Sep 25, 2016 12:32 pm

I suggest that you review the security checklist that I posted a link to above.

Restoring a backup of your site may have resolved the immediate problem, assuming the backup was clean, plus changing the passwords, depending on how the site was hacked.

To be honest I don't know if the crawl errors are something to worried about or not. If your site is not hacked, then probably not.

There is some useful information about dealing with these issues here:https://moz.com/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-e ... ch-console
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