This Site May Harm Your Computer & Your Mind

March 1st, 2008 by Alan Rabinowitz

You better think before using popular applications meant for blogs as the core for your business. What happens when Google decides to remove access to your site from the results because your trendy and popular blog application (WordPress in our case) gets hacked without your knowledge.

Think about it, you invest thousands into marketing and promoting your site via a CMS and Blog application that is so popular, that it constantly needs security updates. Now, your busy managing your business and do not have the time to constantly manage and update the software of the blog, or do not want to because some of the plugins you use do not work on the new version.

Consider also, that if you are lucky enough to get an email from Google reporting the hack and that your site is blocked, you will be luckier still to get the barrier Google uses removed from your listings in Google in a timely manner. This can cause weeks of traffic lost for using a program. This is just plain old frustrating for any business owner.

Its common sense!

Is a popular application worth the risk of a potential and “Hopefully Temporary” loss of traffic? Can you live without Search Engine traffic for weeks, months or even years?

If you’ve never submitted a re-inclusion request with Google then you need to understand the process and the time line as you are likely one of hundreds of thousands of sites (I’m estimating numbers here, and yes, I do believe there are a lot of sites in the queue). A typical re-inclusion; you usually get no response other then a general email stating you will most likely not get a response. You are generally left in the dark for weeks, months and even years with no assistance or the luck of the draw someone fixes your problem, which may not have been a violation. You can be one of many left in the dust, while everyone else seems to do worse than you without any problem. You can go public and call out Matt Cutts and maybe, just maybe, he will be kind enough to respond and help as seen on many blogs that decide publicly screaming is the only way to get attention. I’m still waiting Matt! Please Help!

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Posted in google, marketing, news, seo image    2 Comments

2 Responses to “This Site May Harm Your Computer & Your Mind”

1. on 06 Mar 2008 at 10:52 am   Alan
   
   

   Timeline:
   2/12/08 - Received notification from Google - (Thanks G!)

   2/12/08 - Submitted Reinclusion Request after Removing the hacked code. Received an automated response.

   3/1/08 - Posted about the hack.

   As of this comment date (3/6/08), the site is still unaccessible in Google meaning that this may be the average time line if your website is hacked. 3 Weeks minimum of no Google traffic. No response from the post (unlike other SEO Blogs - yes, I know this is probably not Matt's Dept, but he did make a big note of it here (Read This!), so I expect this hack and situation is common).

2. on 20 Mar 2008 at 10:42 am   Alan
   
   

   3/20/08 1 Month + 1 Week later - Still have the Warnings.

   I think Stardate is going to move to a new domain soon anyway. This will allow me to be more editorial as well. I cannot imagine that all businesses and blogs are treated like this. Some of us are actually legit sites.

   Perhaps we all need to post about the Top ways to remove a competitor from the SERPs. How do we know that one our our competitors did not exploit our blog as well? C'mon G, how man times do i have to say Please.