Parasite to my website
August 1, 2018 11:32 PM Subscribe
It looks like I have some sort of weirdness going on with my webpage.
pardon my lack of web understanding.
A customer said that when the searched for my site they got some sort of version of my page with all the pics replaced by adds for porn sites.
Added after my .com was a adults info.com/ tag that appears to be linked in some way to over a hundred misspelled versions of my page.
What can be done?
If you're talking about http://www.smythesaccordioncenter.com, the only problem I can see is some sort of messy include that's diplaying "ga('require', 'GTM-K4SFZWT');" at the top of the page because it's not in a script section.
I'm not getting any porn or any anti-virus warnings.
posted by krisjohn at 12:58 AM on August 2, 2018
I'm not getting any porn or any anti-virus warnings.
posted by krisjohn at 12:58 AM on August 2, 2018
I've MeMailed you what I believe your friend fround -- essentially your.url.com.adultsinfo.com. I didn't just include it here 'cause I don't know how public you wanted to be about it about your real domain name (though it wasn't hard to find.)
At first glimpse, I don't believe there's anything wrong with your website. I think though that your friend is using some kind of whack search engine that's returting things appended .adultsinfo.com or that they have some sort of javascript or extension malware involved.
posted by Zed at 1:02 AM on August 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
At first glimpse, I don't believe there's anything wrong with your website. I think though that your friend is using some kind of whack search engine that's returting things appended .adultsinfo.com or that they have some sort of javascript or extension malware involved.
posted by Zed at 1:02 AM on August 2, 2018 [10 favorites]
Following on from krisjohn's comment, have you recently edited the page for Google Analytics? Or to add a GDPR plugin?
It should be a trivial matter to (re)move the line of code that's wrongly displaying on your home page but your customer's browser has unrelated issues, I think.
posted by humph at 2:54 AM on August 2, 2018
It should be a trivial matter to (re)move the line of code that's wrongly displaying on your home page but your customer's browser has unrelated issues, I think.
posted by humph at 2:54 AM on August 2, 2018
This is sounding kind of similar to something that happened to the web site for one of my old theater companies - we got a couple people tell us that our site looked out of whack, but went we went to look at it it was fine. Someone would say "hey your site's messed up" and we'd go look and see everything was okay. Repeat, repeat. Finally we realized that there was a virus affecting what people saw if they navigated to our site from a sesarch engine, but if they typed the URL into their browser directly it was fine. I remember it being easy to fix - I think just a few minutes with our ISP's tech support.
I say that because it may be important to check that yourself - check if you also have the same problem when you do a Google search for your company and click the link for the search results. Ask a couple other friends to do so as well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 AM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
I say that because it may be important to check that yourself - check if you also have the same problem when you do a Google search for your company and click the link for the search results. Ask a couple other friends to do so as well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 AM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Years ago some sketchy browser extension managed to install itself in Chrome or Firefox, I don't remember which, and when I went to one particular site, I would see p0rny images. Once I disabled the browser extension, the problem went away. I wonder if something similar is happening on your visitor's side?
However... I'm pretty paranoid about website stuff. Have you taken a close look at your site's code/files to rule out hacking?
posted by missmobtown at 8:19 AM on August 2, 2018
However... I'm pretty paranoid about website stuff. Have you taken a close look at your site's code/files to rule out hacking?
posted by missmobtown at 8:19 AM on August 2, 2018
I could make a subpage on my own website that was metafilter.com.mypage.com and it would have nothing to do with the metafilter website. The last tld is the one you are actually on (tld = top level domain, .com .org .net for example). They might just be spoofing your website and have not hacked anything.
I think you should search for your website on a few different search engines and see if these pages beat yours in any rankings. If they do, you should report them to that search engine for spoofing, adult material, and whatever other options are available and relevant. If you don't find this website in your searches, try a few other devices and networks. Search from home, the library, the wifi at a coffee shop, etc. Make sure you are not logged in to your Google account when you search Google.
posted by soelo at 8:39 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think you should search for your website on a few different search engines and see if these pages beat yours in any rankings. If they do, you should report them to that search engine for spoofing, adult material, and whatever other options are available and relevant. If you don't find this website in your searches, try a few other devices and networks. Search from home, the library, the wifi at a coffee shop, etc. Make sure you are not logged in to your Google account when you search Google.
posted by soelo at 8:39 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: This looks like a "typosquatting" thing. I did not want to post the full URL since it seems that this has some sort of effect on my google rankings but I might be too cautious.
Apparently this is something you do to a competitor to mess with their page ranking.
Or is it that a site which mimics yours at least superficially is appearing in search results and customers are being deceived into visiting the other site by mistake? Is that what you mean by "added after my .com was an adultsinfo.com tag.. linked in some way to over a hundred misspelled versions of my page"? This would be a different class of problem if you have impostor sites mimicing your site and taking advantage of customers who are not carefully scrutinizing search results and would require a different approach to address (and your actual recourse might be limited.) this is what appears to be going on.
Yes it is Smythes accordion center.
posted by boilermonster at 8:41 AM on August 2, 2018
Apparently this is something you do to a competitor to mess with their page ranking.
Or is it that a site which mimics yours at least superficially is appearing in search results and customers are being deceived into visiting the other site by mistake? Is that what you mean by "added after my .com was an adultsinfo.com tag.. linked in some way to over a hundred misspelled versions of my page"? This would be a different class of problem if you have impostor sites mimicing your site and taking advantage of customers who are not carefully scrutinizing search results and would require a different approach to address (and your actual recourse might be limited.) this is what appears to be going on.
Yes it is Smythes accordion center.
posted by boilermonster at 8:41 AM on August 2, 2018
Your Google Analytics token is exposed. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:22 AM on August 2, 2018
posted by humboldt32 at 9:22 AM on August 2, 2018
I searched "Smythes accordion center" using Gogle, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, and ecosia. Your site was the 1st result, except for Duckduckgo, whose 1st result was your Yelp page. I would advice customer to use a good malware/ spyware tool. The major search engines are very good at stopping this sort of nonsense.
posted by theora55 at 9:49 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by theora55 at 9:49 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Or is it that a site which mimics yours at least superficially is appearing in search results and customers are being deceived into visiting the other site by mistake? Is that what you mean by "added after my .com was an adultsinfo.com tag.. linked in some way to over a hundred misspelled versions of my page"? This would be a different class of problem if you have impostor sites mimicing your site and taking advantage of customers who are not carefully scrutinizing search results and would require a different approach to address (and your actual recourse might be limited.)
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:50 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]