In a follow up to the mystery of the missing Green Party website on Google searches, an email to Green Party Watch from Google states that the Green Party (US) website gp.org had been removed from the Google index because it had been hacked. Hundreds of hidden links to websites selling prescription drugs is buried on the gp.org website. Google’s standard practice is to remove compromised websites from its search index.
In the mean time, the webmaster for gp.org has been informed of this, and Google has already taken steps of restoring it in the index in anticipation of the website being cleaned up.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Matt Cutts // Oct 26, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hi Ronald, thanks for posting the update on this. I’m a software engineer at Google and you have my email address now–let me know if you have any questions about cleaning up the hack.
2 Third Party Revolution // Oct 26, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Does anyone know any prominent anti-green activists? They could be responsible for the hack.
3 Susan // Oct 26, 2009 at 2:36 pm
To the previous commenter, it’s unlikely the hack was out of any sort of anti-green sentiment. Those types of “hackers” simply look for any website that has a weakness they can exploit. Especially one which receives good traffic.
I am the webmaster of a non-controversial largish website that was recently hacked into with a very similar problem. One of the reasons Google removes the site is because the hackers can use the links they set up to redirect to their own sites. Not only is this bad for Google, but it completely slows down the host site, in this case GP.org. If GP.org were still showing up in the Google searches it is likely that the website would be barely functional based solely off the incredible amounts of hits it as a result of the hacks.
4 Ronald Hardy // Oct 26, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Susan is likely correct - the links that were pushed onto gp.org’s site were all for purchasing certain “enhancement” drugs.
GPW gets hit with tons of spam comments that are trying to do the same thing but our spam filter keeps them from being posted. I don’t think this was political, but opportunistic.
5 Ronald Hardy // Oct 26, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Matt - thank you!
The webmasters at gp.org have already cleaned up their site, and even found some more on other subpages and scrubbed those as well.
6 David Doonan // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:07 pm
The offending code has been removed and steps taken to prevent this from happening. Big thanks to Greg G. at google.
7 Third Party Revolution // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:08 pm
If it is not an anti-green, then I guess it is most likely Anonymous.
8 Gregg Jocoy // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Thanks to Greg and Matt from Google for the update. I visited gp.org a few times over the past few days, and it never “felt” slow to me, but I take these folks at their word.
I have gotten an education, and to be honest, feel a bit foolish. I do wonder why no phone calls to the national office were made, since that info is on the site, and we are so close to election day, but I also suppose that no site has “right” to indexing in Google.
All in all, this has been a most unpleasant adventure. Sure hope it doesn’t happen again.
Just checked again, and the search results put gp.org at the top.
9 Third Party Revolution // Oct 26, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Well that’s good.
10 Babette Hogan // Oct 27, 2009 at 9:43 am
Gregg - don’t feel foolish for scouting out a problem. You provided a service.
11 Third Party Revolution // Oct 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I wonder if the other minor parties have had similar problems before.
12 Nebraska Left // Nov 1, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I bet someone from the “health care” industry is responsible for this hacking, because the Green Party correctly supports universal health care.
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