Wack "Top search queries" in Places Dashboard

[Colan Nielsen]

I've noticed some very interesting top search queries showing up for a client in the Places dash. Keep in mind, this is an insurance agency. Does anyone have any idea what is happening here?

 

[Marie Ysais]

That happened to me and the website had been hacked. I had to search in the back end, clean it up and so on.....I would check to see if the website has been hacked.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Makes me think he possibly was hacked. Sometimes the words don't show on the page but are in background mainly for spiders to find, hence they would rank for those KWs and rack up impressions.

OR their stats are just buggy which is another possibility.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Whoa...I've never seen anything like that. I'd be really interested in seeing what you unearth, Colan.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Colan have you tried site search for any of those phrases?

Do you remember that really crazy weird spam issue that was raised, I think by Joy where all these insurance keywords were being promoted buried in all kinds of gibberish text on hacked totally off-topic sites? I'll try to find it and post the link.

Edited to add - found it! http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/ranking-puzzles/1653-crazy-blackhat-example.html

Below is one of the spammy entries I found and shared above:

Silly spammers! (Read more at the link, I don't want to repost all the rubbish here and didn't want to link to bad neighborhood, so just linked to Google cache of the page.)

She put her Leon rubbed away enough Never saw Zane again. the KDM proceeded as planned to Houston fringe samples Lunzie had voice. Above that clouds were dont mind especially when the Ryxi and get. There along two thirds the DC area holding factor for most of. You could still get out of this alive. subdued the children gathered be construed as good. A first impression room and stopped dead. When she opened get to see anything inside the compounds.

Is it a auto long island ny insurance usaa good couple of and saw that the. My parents spoke. know that they havent sprayed Spectrum Cure into rubbing her fingers across. And what can they do to me Yeah.

So if THAT is the type of spam/hack on your client's site and if that site above had a Place page, they may get impressions for crazy KWs like: Houston fringe, subdued children and Spectrum Cure.

 

[localsearchguy]

I've seen some strange things like "canada" appearing as a top query. After looking into it I found that Google is only storing the incremental search when a user refines a search. For example if I search for "car insurance" then append "canada" to my search and on the second search my listing appears, I will have an impression for "canada".

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

That's really strange and it seems like a hacking could be the cause. When hackers get into a site (apparently), they can place lots of invisible links etc.

 

[MiriamEllis]

Agree, that looks like a hack issue to me, too. Never good news to hear. Good luck, Colan!

 

[JacobPuhl]

Hey Colan - def seems hacked. You can check webmaster tools search queries. If those are the same types of keywords then there's your answer. Also, you can do a "view page source" CTRL+F to see if any of these kw's have been injected into the sites code.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Thanks everyone!

I'll keep you posted with any developments.