One way to tell if your site has been hacked

I’ve seen a few hacked sites in the years I’ve been freelancing. It’s not always obvious that a site has been hacked, but if you look around you might see:

• New, bogus users
• New plugins or themes that you didn’t install
• Strange errors with plugins or themes
• Spam links in your content (visible or hidden)
• Issues in any security scans

One thing I haven’t seen until this year, though, is a bogus sitemap.

Your sitemap is what tells Google and other search engines which pages on your site should be indexed (and served up in search results). Most pages and all posts on your site are typically indexed.

Here’s an example of a bogus sitemap. You can see that these links are not links from the site. Here’s an example of a regular sitemap. You can see that not only do I have my pages and posts indexed, but presentations and portfolio items.

So today, check your sitemap! You may find it at:

• yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• yoursite.com/sitemaps.xml
• yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml
• yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml

Check the links in the sitemap to make sure they are legit pages on your site and pages that you want to be served up by search engines.

If you can’t find your sitemap or it doesn’t look good, reach out and I’ll see if I can help.

P.S. I was recently on two amazing podcasts — Playhouse Friends and Storylines Live. Also, check out the latest from the blog — Questions to ask when you’re asking for feedback and Email templates to send to clients.