An Update on Google Blacklisting / Any DMOZ editors out there?
Home > News	February 11, 2007 12:21 PM

Still no word yet from StopBadware regarding their blacklisting of our site, but we did get some feedback from SiteAdvisor which helped us to identify what was likely the problem. The first popup image on our PestPatrol review page was hacked with a nasty little piece of javascript that opened a hidden iframe and redirected IE6 users to a Russian website. This site would then reportedly install a piece of malware.

Fortunately, very few people ever clicked on that image. We fixed the problem and have upgraded our movabletype installation so these types of hacks shouldn't be possible anymore. However, that doesn't fix the problems caused by StopBadware:

* We've lost most of our rankings on Google
* We've lost our DMOZ listing - this was a huge setback. Being listed in the ODP lets Google know that we are a relevant, trustworthy site.
* Our links on Google (for those keywords in which we are still ranking) are being blocked, making it very difficult for people to actually click through.

I still find it incredibly frustrating that I could spend three years building a website that has been visited by over a million people (and presumably has helped many of them), and StopBadware can take all of that away overnight.

Emails, diggs, comments, and links to the original article are appreciated. And if you happen to be a DMOZ editor (or know one), can you help us get reinstated in the directory?

Huge props to SiteAdvisor for helping us to find the problem.