22 June 2016
I was on my break from work and I was still enjoying the freedom of having to do nothing until I received an email from a company I was working with that my site is flagged as a hacked site by Google. Hacked? Since when my website was hacked? I went into this panic mode and quickly reset my password.
Keeping my fingers crossed, I was hoping that the tag will be removed after I’ve changed my password. But it is still flagged as hacked. I clicked on the link and it prompted me to check my Google search console under security issues to find out the root of the problem.
What does Google have to say? NOTHING. I did a quick research online and read that sometimes Google flagged sites as hacked when they detected spam links within the site. These spam links maybe were hidden so it is difficult for Google or some malware website scan to detect signs of the site being hacked. Then I recalled that I might have some spam links included in the comments section. I thought these were harmless but apparently, it’s not the case. So I made the painful decision to just delete all of your comments. Lesson learnt: don’t accept any comments with fishy links in it.
After meddling with my blog for the whole morning and afternoon, my site is still flagged. And I was getting really worried that no one would dare to enter my site. So I decided to seek Google for help but there aren’t there 24/7 and I can only communicate with them via Google Webmaster Central Help Forum. I had my response within a day but it wasn’t that helpful at all. So I decided to continue reading up on fixing hacked sites and run malware scans on my website.
I was also praying that Google would lift off the flag. Is this is really going to be the end of my blog?
23 June 2016
After dealing with this problem for the whole day since yesterday, I was really tired out and couldn’t believe that such a thing would happen. I also thought of changing my web host to WordPress which seems like a more blogger-friendly platform to establish my blog. Perhaps I could also invest in getting my very own domain? I eventually did purchase my own domain but I would still need time to migrate all the stuff from my current blog to the new website. I also transfer all the content from this blog to WordPress just in case my blog didn’t revive.
I continued to read more into hacked sites and but still had no clue how to get it solved. Now, it’s all on Google side to check whether if my site has been hacked.
24 June 2016
The good news finally came when Sam did a Google search on my site and realized that the tag has been lifted off!
I was so so so relieve! I’ve been using this platform for almost 6 years now and I can’t bear to leave blogger actually. Maybe the layout here isn’t as professional as the layout at WordPress but it is so much easier to use Blogspot.
Anyhow, I was just so glad that the issue was resolved within two days. If there are any of you guys out there who encounter the same problem, my advice is to clear all the spam links at your site and do online malware scan checks. Then, pray and trust in Him.
