Website is redirected to scam site only when clicking from Google search results

Website is redirected to scam site only when clicking from Google search results - If a page has internal and external outgoing links to redirecting URLs, it’s returning 3xx (301, 302, etc.) HTTP status codes standing for redirection. This issue means that the page does not exist on a permanent or temporary basis. It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side. You can find more details about redirecting URLs by reading the Google Search Central overview. In this article, we’ll go over how you can fix the Website is redirected to scam site only when clicking from Google search results error on your web browser. Problem :

I am trying to investigate a weird attack on a Joomla 3.6.5 website: If you access the website directly through its URL, everything works as expected. However, if you search for the website using Google and use the search result (showing the exact same URL that works fine) you end up being redirected to another (scam) website.

How could someone facilitate this? Would taking control of the Google Webmaster tools be sufficient to setup such redirects?

Solution :

How could someone facilitate this?

Compromising any part of the PHP/Joomla/Plugin code could be enough to implement such a redirect.

However, these attacks are commonly achieved by writing malicious code to the .htaccess file that then checks the HTTP Referer and redirects the user visiting from the Google SERPs.

Would taking control of the Google Webmaster tools be sufficient to setup such redirects?

No - you can't implement such a redirect within Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools)

There are a lot of places where a little tiny code can be implemented that does the job!

Here are my suggested steps to take towards fixing the issue:

• You may find out where is that code exactly written by opening your
  joomla folder(ftp, sftp) and checking your last modify date of the
  folders > files. This way you may find where is the bad code!




• I would also recommend you to update your Joomla to latest version
  
  asap!




• If you are already on the latest version, I recommend you to
  
  reinstall the Joomla core by going to Administrator > Components >
  Joomla Update and click on the reinstall core button!




• If after this the issue is still present, then the issue is
  
  somewhere in the templates folder or somewhere in the 3rd party
  
  modules/plugins that are not coming with Joomla by default. If
  
  there are such extensions(modules/plugins) try disabling them from
  Joomla admin and check if the issue is still there!




• Also please check your .htaccess and see if there is any strange code
  present! if possible, remove .htaccess and after reinstalling
  the Joomla core, rename the htaccess.txt to .htaccess.

P.S. If it is always redirecting to the same scam site, try searching the whole project(files/folders) by the domain name of the scam website!

Hope this helps!
Best,
Gev

We hope that this article has helped you resolve the google-search-console, redirects, joomla error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!