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Just before the previous Christmas our website was hacked, and our Christmas present was some files put on our server and a redirect to an online pharmacy selling viagra! Happy Christmas us! Luckily we found out a couple of days after it happened, so all the files were removed and also the redirect ones. We also purchased security software and all seemed to be back to normal except that our traffic remained low.

However just recently we found out on our Google Search Console under the tab Link and then on Main Anchor from External Links (my Google Console is in Portuguese, so maybe it doesn't translate exactly like that...) that the word "viagra" is the third most popular link term listed... Now, how bad is that? We exported the external links list and found quite a few related to "viagra"... not sure yet if those links page are still online, as I haven´t checked them all yet..

Do you think that is still negatively affecting our website? How can we clear that "viagra" word out of our Google Console?

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3 Answers 3

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If the links are going to error pages on your site, there is no need to do anything about them. Google won't penalize your site in any way for having links to your site with bad anchor text that go to 404 or 410 error pages.

It won't clear out of Google Search Console as long as the other sites are still linking to you, but you can just ignore it there.

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Have you tried going to the Search Console and clicking on Removals (under Index) and submitting all those malicious URLs to be removed from the index?

Alternatively if that doesn't work or you have no more luck or options left, try disavowing any malicious links.

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  • Hi David, I haven´t tried the Removals from Search Console, as I didn´t know I could do that with external links. I will try that if it is not too late as I sent a file to disavow the malicious links. I just don´t know how long it will take to disavow those...
    – Ruby
    Feb 21, 2020 at 15:04
  • You can use the removal tool with any page on your site that the hack created. You can't remove external links and pages with it. Disavow is for spammy incoming links to your site but you shouldn't use it unless you have a penalty from Google. Google Says If You Don't Have A Manual Action, You Don't Need To Submit A Disavow
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Feb 22, 2020 at 9:09
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@david is said perfect, You need to try the search console removals feature. Also if you found any bad backlink to your site. You'll also disavow that bad backlink. If you don't know how to disavow. Go to youtube you'll find too much videos on that topic. I also did this for my website. due to bad backlinks I got the penguin penalty from google. So I disavowed those links and after 5 months my site recovered from the penalty.

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