My Google problem turned out to be a Wordpress problem
I know I said last word on Google, but guess what? I lied. This is too important not to share with you.
So to recap, you know the story of how I lost my google traffic, and then how I tried to figure out why I lost my google traffic.
A couple days later, on a whim, I decided to revisit google’s cached pages of PixelRN.com. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. So I clicked on one of the cached pages, did a “view source” to see the HTML, and low and behold I scrolled all the way to the bottom and found this:
So now I realized that someone had hacked into my wordpress blog and flooded it with hidden spam. This completely freaked me out. I mean, who would want to hack into my lil’ old blog? But at last I had found out exactly why I lost my search engine traffic: Google thought I was a spammer.
After reading about similar situations, I realized that my site was hacked because of a vulnerability in earlier versions of Wordpress (2.1 - 2.3). Previously I hadn’t been in any hurry to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, because I was afraid I might screw something up. I eventually got over this fear, and upgraded, but by that time it was too late.
So meanwhile, I changed my wordpress password, and upgraded to Wordpress 2.6.2.
I then became completely unable to log onto my wordpress admin page, meaning, I couldn’t update Pixelrn at all.
I spent some time on the Wordpress forums. I fooled around with Google Webmaster Tools. I fooled around with phpMyAdmin. I learned how to add a new user, and change the password manually. I learned about MD5 hash. I also fooled around with the wp-config file. I even tried an emergency wordpress password reset script. Nothing worked, and no one could give me any answers on the Wordpress forums.
Finally, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to export my database, delete all the files from PixelRN, reinstall wordpress, and import the parts of the database that I was pretty sure were okay.
Not looking forward to any of this, I procrastinated.
While I was procrastinating, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, was alerted to the problems I was having and wrote a blog post about it. While it thrilled me to no end that someone from Google was actually paying attention, I was still S.O.L. as far as getting onto my wordpress admin page. Maybe it would have been better if someone had alerted the other Matt, Matt Mullenweg (the creator of wordress.) As it turned out, I was supposed to attend WordCamp NYC on Sunday, where Matt was speaking. I opted to instead stay home. I was way too down on Wordpress to attend, and besides, I needed to actually spend time fixing the problem.
So that’s how I spent my Sunday afternoon: fixing PixelRN.com. As you can see, it worked, because here I am blogging again!
Tomorrow: I’ll blog about what I learned from this experience. I’m hoping I can save others from having the same experience.
I'm a critical care nurse, and a social media evangelist. Find out more 
This is kinda way over my head but keep it coming. ‘glad you’re able to fix it.
Karin RN — October 6, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Wow, what happened to you is absolutely frightening. I applaud you for your resourcefulness & tenacity in figuring out the problem and am looking forward to your “How I fixed it” post. I recently lost traffic to my blog and am trying to figure out what went wrong. Your post reminded me that I also need to upgrade.
Helen — October 6, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
So does this mean that you get Google traffic again? This incident is very disturbing.
MJ
motherjonesrn — October 6, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
UN- BEE- LIEVABLE!!O M G. Please tell me how to avoid what happened to you. I think I am, going to enable the CAPTCHA in my comments. I have heard of things like this happening, but how does one check our blog’s health for spam? I have spyware doctor and adaware but I don’t think it will scan my blog. Great video by the way. You sound exactly like I thought you would.
Also, I feel the same, though after anonomizer kept saying that stat counter was a bad site, I dont know what to believe. I am ready to take your recommendation on a stat counter program. love, Bobby, not the liver.
Bobby — October 6, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
Erk, sorry to hear it was such a pain getting your site back in order. At any rate, welcome back!
Mental Father (nonmedical) — October 6, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
@MJ: I’m starting to see a little google traffic trickle in, but I still need to resubmit my site to google.
@Bobby: Tune in for the next post. I’ll show you how you can keep your site safe. I’ve always used statcounter and also google analytics.
@Mental Father: thanks! It’s good to be back. Yeah - it was a pain alright but a great learning experience.
admin — October 7, 2008 @ 5:06 am
@Karin RN: Just noticed you won the free blog makeover from Shane. I’d say that’s a great opportunity for you to learn more about this stuff.
@Helen - thanks! The one thing that is very satisfying about all of this is that I managed to diagnose and fix the problem, practically on my own. That’s a good feeling.
admin — October 7, 2008 @ 5:11 am
oops - admin is “Beth” BTW : )
admin — October 7, 2008 @ 5:11 am
DOUBLE WOW. Thanks for sharing your information. I’m glad to hear you at least got the site back up and running.
Whew…
Strong One — October 7, 2008 @ 7:04 am
What an experience! Glad you were able to finally figure out what happened and thanks for sharing everything that has happened to you with Google, wordpress and evil spammers.
Vanessa — October 7, 2008 @ 8:11 am
Most all blog hacks are from people not upgrading their blog software.
If you don’t change your theme often, just backup your template one time, then create or download a script to email you a database dumb every couple days.
Hacker Forums
Hacker Forums — October 7, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
I am glad you found a solution to your “Google Slap”. Many people who don’t have a background in web design would have just given up. The online world is constantly changing, and you have to keep up on your updates to beat the hackers. Hopefully you won’t have to deal with this again!
Cheap Scubs — October 9, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
[...] at Blogher. This was an excellent event. I’ll admit, I went there with skepticism. This whole google wordpress drama has kind of put me into a existential tailspin with regards to blogging, plus I never really [...]
BlogHer DC Wrap-up » PixelRN — October 15, 2008 @ 11:59 am