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Google Webmaster tools is reporting a large increase in 'not found errors' on my site, and I see approximately 1700 'Not Found Errors over the past 2 months. All of them are for a url that is formatted like:

http://mydomain.com/click.php?c%3EdHm7fnGkc3Smdz6kc31%3E'dmjdlgsbve%3E2'lfzxpset%3EQfbs'sbol%3E2'f%3Evt%3Cvt%3C79%3C2%3C2%3C54528243%3Cgmbnjohpspbe%3C2%3C6224'vsm%3Eiuuq%264B%263G%263Gxxx%2Fopdmjdlz%2Fdpn%263G'gffe%3Eopqbz'qsjdf%3E'tbq%3E%3A84%3A9g54e662db639%3A28eeb2cc8bb8e9'zbsht%3Exxx%2Fopdmjdlz%2Fdpn

Google says these are linked from:

http://mydomain.com/index.php?Keywords=Pear&search_type=related2&cat2=Lemon+Cake&r=c%3EdHm7fnGkc3Smdz6kc31%3E'f%3Evt%3Cvt%3C79%3C2%3C2%3C27748763%3Ctuzmf2%60dvtupn/dtt%3C3%3Cjoufsdptnpt%60bggjmjbuf%603%60e3s%60efsq%3Cgmbnjohpspbe%3Cgmbnjohpspbe%3C656178%3C6224%3Cdmfbo%3Cmjtujoht%3Czbipp%3C'jqvb%60je%3E:84:9g54e662db639:28eeb2cc8bb8e9'enybsht%3Eg4dc139e6673d:812b:b::d8e34:9fe9&rd=1

When I browse to the url Google says these are linked from (both using my browser, and the fetch by Google tool), I don't see any links on the page to click.php. These links are supposedly coming from MY domain / server, but click.php does not even exist on my server. When I look through my server logs, I do not see any of the index.php? urls this says they are accessed from.

What am I missing here? Is the link getting encoded in the url or something? How can I fix this? I would REALLY appreciate some help in figuring this out.

Update:

I had purchased a domain (that was previously parked), and moved my site to it a few months ago. Apparently these links existed on the parked domain, and Google has gone through and crawled all ~1700 of the links twice now. Once a few months ago, and once 2 days ago. Is this something that will affect my ranking in Google? Is there any way to notify Google that all of these links are gone / incorrect? Should I use the 'remove urls' tool in webmaster tools?

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2 Answers 2

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These links are supposedly coming from MY domain / server, but click.php does not even exist on my server.

This sounds like a server or web application exploit. You should likely run a virus check and a web application security scanner.

You should also configure your web server to return a 410 Gone error for any requests containing click.php (or pattern only found in the bogus URLs):

410 Gone Indicates that the resource requested is no longer available and will not be available again. This should be used when a resource has been intentionally removed and the resource should be purged. Upon receiving a 410 status code, the client should not request the resource again in the future. Clients such as search engines should remove the resource from their indices. Most use cases do not require clients and search engines to purge the resource, and a "404 Not Found" may be used instead.

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  • That was my thought at first too, but it seems odd that the click.php link does not show up for me when using fetching via the Googlebot useragent. I can send a url if that would help. In the meantime, I'm running nikto, and looking for other tools.
    – xur17
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 2:11
  • Side note: I've been looking into this for a few days now, and have come up with nothing. The fact that I can't reproduce the link makes this a lot more challenging.
    – xur17
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 2:14
  • I think I figured it out. Answer post below.
    – xur17
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 2:34
  • Apparently I can't answer this (I have too few reputation points), so I selected this as the answer, and put the answer in the main post. Thanks for the help.
    – xur17
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 2:37
  • I'll add it as an "Update" to the question. The 410 Gone server response still applies. You can use the Disavow links tool, however Google will remove them after it receives the 410 response for them anyway.
    – dan ♦
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 3:59
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Disallow those URL using Robots.txt. As these fake URL must have been created during development process and are indexed as well.

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  • Do I disavow the links even though they are coming from my domain? Index.php is a valid url on my site, just the links (click.php) that previously existed for this url are not valid, and should be removed. Googlebot doesn't crawl the index.php?Keywords=... pages, it has just been crawling the page that this previously linked to.
    – xur17
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 11:33

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