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djbaxter
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I think my site has been hacked!
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Thursday, November 26, 2009
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Google Webmaster Central Blog
Thursday, November 26, 2009
How to use "Fetch as Googlebot", part 1
Webmaster level: Intermediate
Has your site ever dropped suddenly from the index or disappeared mysteriously from search results? Have you ever received a notice that your site is using cloaking techniques? Unfortunately, sometimes a malicious party "hacks" a website: they penetrate the security of a site and insert undesirable content. Sophisticated attackers can camouflage this spammy or dangerous content so that it doesn't appear for normal users, and appears only to Googlebot, which could negatively impact your site in Google's results.
In such cases it used to be very difficult to detect the problem, because the site would appear normal in the eyes of the user. It may be possible that only requests with a User-agent: of Googlebot and coming from Googlebot's IP could see the hidden content. But that's over: with Fetch as Googlebot, the new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools, you can see exactly what Googlebot is seeing, and avoid any kind of cloaking problems.
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