Google Search Can Filter Out Apparent Hack Spam However Not All

What if your site gets hacked and there is a ton of spammy content placed on it? Do you have to worry about negative consequences on your Google rankings and overall SEO efforts? John Mueller of Google said Google can filter out the most obvious hacks but what is placed on your website is what Google likely sees, so make sure to be on top of your security.

John Mueller said on Twitter that “mostly, what you publish on your website, is what we’ll take into account.” So even if you don’t publish it on your site and someone else does, Google will likely take that into account. He added, “some kinds of hacks are so obvious that we’ve learned to just filter them out.” So in some cases, Google won’t look at the content produced by the hack.

“Even then, you need to clean it up & fix the security issues. Search will settle down over time, removals for important URLs,” he also said.

Here are those tweets:

Mostly, what you publish on your website, is what we’ll take into account. Some kinds of hacks are so obvious that we’ve learned to just filter them out. Even then, you need to clean it up & fix the security issues. Search will settle down over time, removals for important URLs.

— 🌽〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉🌽 (@JohnMu) September 19, 2022

So in short, no one likes hacks, not Google, not your site visitors, and not the site owner. Do what you can to prevent it and at least make sure you can put the site back the way it was before the hack in a quick and efficient manner.

Because you cannot blame Google for indexing hacked content on your site and for that potentially impacting your overall site’s ranking.

Forum discussion at Twitter.