Double Your Website Leads

Get "7 Steps To Doubling Your Website Leads" via email.

Naughty, Naughty: A Tale Of SEO Sabotage

November 25, 2009 on 7:27 pm | In SEO | 63 Comments

Welcome back! Good to see you. If you haven't seen it, here's the archive of my best writing. Thanks for visiting!

Recently, one of our recent web design clients reported that when their new site went live, they lost ground in the organic search engines for some key terms for which they had previously ranked well.

We thought this was very odd: the on-page SEO on the new site was certainly a lot more focused than the old, and all technical best-practices such as installing 301 redirects where relevant had been followed to the letter.

We analysed the site several times over a series of weeks, made a few tweaks and kept an eye on the site, expecting to see the rankings return.

No joy.

Then one of our techs had the idea of double-checking the robots.txt file for the site and found that the settings had been changed to “disallow” search engines from crawling the site – in other words, to render the entire site invisible to Google et al.

After a bit of drilling down and consultation with the client, we established that there were only two people besides us who had FTP access to the site — the client’s web host, and their previous web designer.

Turns out that the previous website designer wasn’t too pleased when the redesign job was handed over to us, and had snuck in and changed the robots.txt settings in order to sabotage the SEO rankings of the new site (naughty, naughty).

This is a relatively subtle change that can only be picked up if you’re looking for it — it could have easily flown under the radar for much longer had our tech not decided to double-check everything and explore every angle.

(Luckily, in the interim we had set up the client with PPC campaigns, which were working very well and keeping them busy with new projects.)

It’s a little hard to believe that a professional provider would go to these lengths to sabotage the results of a former client, but I guess the moral of the story is, “keep your friends close, and your FTP details even closer”.

And just in case, check your robots.txt file as well

No Related Post

63 Comments »

63 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Wow, some people are just strange hey – you’re being quite the gentleman to not name the offending individual.

Perhaps your process should include changing the FTP password with every handover now

Chris

Comment by Chris Khoo — November 25, 2009 #
Interesting story. I guess this is in support of changing passwords once in a while. Especially when changing from one consultant to another…

Comment by Ahmad Barirani — November 27, 2009 #
Woah, that is quite a bit of Sabotage indeed. Goes to show that some people just aren’t truly professional. It’s a good thing that tech guy caught on. =)

Comment by Satha — November 27, 2009 #
Wow talk about sabotage. Not nice at all >:( . I’ll be sure to check my robots.txt files and change passwords every now and again. Be careful using the same password for everything as well!

Comment by Daniel Coupet — November 27, 2009 #
The lengths some people will go to to for SEO. Good thing the tech picked up the disallow in robots.txt

Comment by cyberst0rm's tech blog — November 27, 2009 #
The robot text trick to shut search bots lol, thought that the bots dont quite obey the robots.txt, must double check mine now. crawl bot crawl..

Comment by cllow — November 29, 2009 #
It’s sad that anyone would burn a bridge like that, yet a hearty “well done” should be given to your tech. I’m sure it could have taken quite a bit of time without his/her idea to check that out.

Comment by Dena: NJ Scrap Metal — November 30, 2009 #
one of my friend in my company makes a php script which will be activated in 6 months from the project completion.

In that script he does the same thing … but he does it as to prevent from getting fraud from customer .. if the customer doesn’t pay the full amount as discussed earlier .. he will keep that automated script running

so its another tactic to be naughty

Comment by Jaspal — November 30, 2009 #
I have seen more and more situations where sites were hacked through either minor changes to htaccess, robots.txt or other nefarious means. The hacks are minor but significantly impact the sites ability to rank well. May make sense to routinely check files.

Comment by PowerPoint Templates — November 30, 2009 #
That’s the good thing of being thorough, (i hope your client did not crucify the villain for being naughty)

Comment by Egi — December 1, 2009 #
Nice post as usual.

Comment by Article Directory — December 2, 2009 #
Well…. I couldn’t even imagine that someone will go so far… Keep your FTP details where no one can find them!

Comment by Ligurien Vacationer — December 3, 2009 #
What I’ve always done with new clients is insist on our own hosting which hopefully should sort this type of problem out. Another tool I use for passwords is Roboform ideal for creating passwords and saving them!

Comment by SEO Preston — December 4, 2009 #
just checked my robots.txt its sad people would do this, but in this day and age knowing who you can trust can be hit and miss!

Comment by mc — December 5, 2009 #
One of the things that need to look into consideration is you should always check your robots.txt it’s a way of saying the search engine what part of your site that you will be going to index and what are those part that will be excluded.

Comment by Matthew — December 11, 2009 #
Funny story, why did they not change the ftp access of the previous web designer? That’s totally inexcusable on their part, the designer could also sabotage more than their robot.txt..

Comment by Mal Johnson — December 12, 2009 #
hello
Good thing the tech picked up the disallow in robots.txt

Comment by jayesh — December 14, 2009 #
ah, never forget the old robots.txt

Comment by MAc — December 15, 2009 #
The robot text trick to shut search bots lol, thought that the bots dont quite obey the robots.txt, must double check mine now. crawl bot crawl..

Comment by Sat?l?k Daire — December 17, 2009 #
thanks for the info…. I though robot.txt was not so important

thank you

Comment by Francesco — December 17, 2009 #
Nice post – always change the FTP passwords when you take over a job

Comment by Fruit Cage — December 17, 2009 #
You wont believe it but I would have done the same thing. I feel very jealous at times

Comment by Article Directory — December 20, 2009 #
I faced a problem with my BlogSpot blog where we cannot edit the robots.txt
I had multiple labels per article and it was showing me that I have duplicate content issues.

Comment by Tech-Freak Stuff — December 22, 2009 #
I never understand robots.txt what is doing untill read your article thanks.

Comment by estetik — December 23, 2009 #
Hmmm, yes i have heard horror stories about key pages on sites being sent to supplemental page hell… Its a bit of a worry

Comment by Bars and Night Clubs — December 25, 2009 #
Unfortunately this is the way things can go in the trade. Lots of amateurs with little ethic.

Insightful post.

Comment by Web Design Clearwater — December 26, 2009 #
I have been using robots.txt to block search engine robots to “wp-admin” and “wp-include”, thank you for the tutorial

Comment by Facial and Beauty Care Treatment — December 27, 2009 #
Wow this is a naughty thing to do. Have they not broken a the terms of their contract by gaining access and trying to damage there reputation?

I personally would name and shame them for such an act. There is no knowing how much damage they could have done to new clients.

Comment by Blogging Tips — December 29, 2009 #
Good story, and yes nothing should be outside of the possible when it comes to web “designers”. I had a terrible time once taking over as the corporate web developer for a company that previously had each of four divisions doing it’s own disparate web development. Believe me, especially the graphics department web designer folks can be really petty as well as especially devious. The comment about controlling access above I think is also very good. Nobody should have a password that doesn’t absolutely need it. The thing is, next time around you probably will just look at this file as a matter of course. Live and learn.

Comment by Computer Repair — December 29, 2009 #
You definitely have to be careful, especially with previous employees who have access to any sort of sensitive material. Good practice is to change your passwords once every 6 months.

Comment by Long Island Web Design — January 1, 2010 #
Thank you so much for sharing this post. I just recently had to “terminate” a designer that was not working out. I had forgot all about disabling his FTP account, and I am glad I saw this article. If I had not, I may have found myself in this same position. Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you. Could be lifesaver of a reminder.

Comment by Jessi G — January 2, 2010 #
wow very sneaky. good catch though. this post makes want to look more into the robots.txt

Comment by Apple tablet — January 4, 2010 #
We would all like to think everyone in this business is a professional, unfortunately they are not. It is too often now a days that we are dealing with an ignorant previous web designer or seo guy that did squat to help his clients rankings.

The only thing is that is what you are going to find, as the people that run into a good web designer or seo company don’t ever need to replace them.

Comment by Sarasota SEO — January 4, 2010 #
happens all the time. seo can be a very shady biz to be in and you need to keep your eyes peeled for losers like that. good catch!

Comment by cheap macbook pro — January 7, 2010 #
Wow, not very nice to be so spiteful.

Comment by Patrick — January 7, 2010 #
I ought to try this to some of our more annoying clients. >:D

Comment by Calls to Philippines — January 11, 2010 #
That’s ashame that people are like that. Can’t people just come to realize that sometimes, you’re just beat out in business…. And that’s just business… No need to sabotage anything!!

Comment by Article Submitter — January 12, 2010 #
This situation comes up time after time; you hire a technical person and then when they leave you have to work out all the logins and settings that they have access to!

Comment by Chris Webb — January 12, 2010 #
Really hilarious to see that but its quite serious if it happens with your own blogs just like me!

Comment by Matt — January 15, 2010 #
Found your blog while googling. Consider me as regular follower of blog. Hope to see some more stuff in future.

Comment by Chinese — January 16, 2010 #
Moral of the story, change the password regularly so as to protect the core of your system. It also pays to have very good techs.

Comment by Zen Cart — January 18, 2010 #
That is so wrong. Why would he do that? He is only making himself look bad and his services. People like that need to be brought to light. There may be another victim out there just like that client.

Comment by earning money online — January 23, 2010 #
Thanks. I had the same situation several weeks ago.
I do not know what it was: previous web-site programmer or virus/sniffer has stole FTP password.
Anyway it is good practice to change FTP passwords.
Also I think SSH connection should be used instead of FTP

Comment by Obzor — January 24, 2010 #
That is disappointing, that only shows that the web designer is not professional. He is only putting himself in a bad light and he might soon be having difficulty gaining the trust of his clients.

Comment by Webranes — February 3, 2010 #
Found your blog while googling.Thank you so much for sharing this post.I just recently had to “terminate” a designer that was not working out.I feel glad that saw this blog of yours.Moral of story is keep changing your password and always check your robots.txt to protect your core system.Hope to see some more stuff in future.

Comment by Orlando Website Design — February 4, 2010 #
Sounds to me his a little more then just a web designer. A web designer with Search Engine knowledge, how cute…

Comment by Search Engine Results Page — February 7, 2010 #
happens all the time. seo can be a very shady biz to be in and you need to keep your eyes peeled for losers like that. good catch!

Comment by affiliate network program — February 7, 2010 #
Ouch, that’s messed up.

So he didn’t think it might be worth trying to win the client back, sabotage is the way to go instead hey?

Comment by Andrew Keir — February 8, 2010 #
Well, you have to say that the former designer didn’t actually give himself much credit – and future tasks It’s a shame that people go to these lengths, but it’s nice that people focus on where to potentially look if if something possibly isn’t right

Comment by Tjene penger — February 9, 2010 #
Wow what an ass you guys lost a lot of business because of an angry ex contract worker thats b.s at least you caught it before you dropped even farther in the rankings. Just spread the word about this guy and hopefully you will help push him out of business. Good story!

Comment by Affiliate Marketing Lessons — February 9, 2010 #
I found this post just from searching for new SEO techniques. Great information and stuff that I never thought of before. Too bad of this type of story and unprofessional people like this. The world is full of stuff like this unfortunately.

Comment by Derrek Neil — February 10, 2010 #
Naughty naughty? Sounds like its verging on the criminal to me…

Comment by Freelance Italian to English Translator — February 13, 2010 #
It seems like there are so many things that can go wrong with a good web page that it is mind boggling. Now I have yet another thing to worry about.

I’m so paranoid that I just wonder how many hackers are going to take this example of bad behavior and to see it as a legitimate way to compete.

Comment by Alabama Business Today — February 18, 2010 #
That’s why I feel uneasy letting a designer access to my FTP account…

Comment by iPad — February 18, 2010 #
Whew. Just checked all the robots.txt of my sites…they’re all good. Now to change the passwords..

Comment by Blue Microwave — February 19, 2010 #
Indeed this is very good lesson that we should be careful regarding the risky and key important fact of internet and websites marketing.

Comment by Flashgames — February 20, 2010 #
Nice post but not if you are the client! That is really bad sabotage from the design company. Like many others have stated though this seems quite common practice when so called professionals lose work to a competitor

Comment by UK Boot Camp — February 21, 2010 #
Wow, that’s a bit of a low blow. Glad to hear that you managed to sort the problem out. Have you managed to change the settings so that he no longer has access?

Comment by Referral Guide — February 22, 2010 #
its very technical post like robots.txt file checking and all that. but great article.

Comment by xebec emedia — February 22, 2010 #
Fantastic blog with rich information regardin SEO.
I started my own blog not long ago and i am constantly on the search for new SEO aspects and techniques.

Great Resource of knowledge over here!

Keep them coming.

Comment by Webcodez.net - Web Development — February 24, 2010 #
This is not the first instance of this I have heard of or experienced. I recently gained a new client who was not very pleased with the efforts or cost of their existing SEO consultant.During the period of getting rid of him and hiring me he caused chaos on the clients site.Why he did this when it was so easy to trace everything back to him and at the risk of losing the little reputation he had in the local community is beyond me.

Comment by SEO Leicester — February 26, 2010 #
You should also submit site to Google get your site verified and let Google crzwl your site and check for problems.
Doing that would also have flagged yous problem.

Comment by Dating Sites Reviews — February 26, 2010 #
How…unprofessional. Thing is though, the previous designer could presumably have wiped EVERYTHING and done some real damage, yet they simply changed the robots.txt to “disallow”. That’s all they did, and in a way; it’s even more evil and petty than if they simply were to delete everything.

- Gillian

Comment by how to train my dog — March 2, 2010 #