Website Hacked TGBarker Data Website Security

Author: TGBarker November 2025 |

It’s astonishing how many daily hacking attempts are made by bots trying to bring down your website,” says Gordon Barker. “TGBSL helps protect your site from being attacked or hacked.”

Most website owners only check their analytics to see how many people visited their pages. At TGBarker, we take that one step further — we look at who those visitors really are to be able to make an informed decision. If you think you have been hacked, what are the hacked pages or is it the whole website?

Most website analytics programs used in business provide an owner with analytical data-backed decisions. They normally inform you how many visitors you have had and many other facts. Web analytics tools are made up of software that’s designed to track, measure, and report on website activity, such as site traffic, visitor source, and user clicks. But we also monitor the bad players and stop them from visiting your site.

It started as part of a standard SEO workflow: collecting crawl data to understand which pages Google, Bing, and PetalBot were indexing. But what we discovered in those logs went far beyond SEO — hidden inside the crawl data were the fingerprints of automated scanners, brute-force attempts, and reconnaissance bots quietly testing our website’s defenses.

That’s where the idea for the TGBarker Security Layer (TGBSL) was born to prevent hackers or suspicious players coming from Russia, China or elsewhere?

The Next Step in Website Intelligence

We’ve developed a system that combines data gathering and security reporting into a single process. It doesn’t just count visits; it monitors patterns — spotting unusual traffic, identifying legitimate search engine bots, and flagging potential threats before they become problems.

Our system logs every connection, examines user-agent strings, cross-checks IP addresses, and builds a profile for each visitor. By doing so, it creates a living picture of who’s accessing the website — where a hacking attempt might be coming from not just the predictable rhythm of Googlebot but where the chaotic bursts of unknown IPs in Tokyo or Moscow originated.

This dual-layer approach isn’t just about collecting SEO insights; it’s about early threat detection.
At worst, it can help prevent a coordinated DDoS attempt or mass exploit scan.
At best, it gives us valuable intelligence about how search engines and crawlers are discovering our content — allowing us to fine-tune both our SEO and our server security in the same motion.

When SEO Meets Cybersecurity

Traditional analytics tools like Google Search Console tell you what got crawled; our approach reveals who’s crawling and why.
By blending SEO data with security intelligence, we’ve created a feedback loop where every crawl log serves two purposes:

Enhancing visibility in search results, and
Protecting the integrity of the site.

The result is a proactive website monitoring system that learns continuously. It treats every bot as a potential signal — either of opportunity or of risk — and it responds accordingly.

An example of our daily report sent out to all security personnel protecting a website and its users from cyber threats like hacking, malware, and data breaches.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What the Crawl Logs Revealed

Once the system went live, the results came in faster than expected. In less than 24 hours, our visitor tracker recorded over 300 separate hits from more than 180 unique IP addresses. At first glance, that sounds like a great day for SEO — until you look closer.

Hidden among the legitimate search engines were waves of automated probes, random PHP file requests, and repeated hits to plugin directories that no human visitor would ever touch. The data painted a picture of three distinct worlds — the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

1. The Good — Legitimate Crawlers and SEO Allies

Our first discovery was reassuring: a healthy number of visits came from trusted search engines and industry-grade crawlers.

Googlebot was indexing the site methodically, checking pages like /seo-book/ and /local-seo-london/.
Bing’s MSNBot showed up with keyword-related queries.
PetalBot, Huawei’s crawler, was particularly active across our SEO and content marketing pages.
AhrefsBot and Applebot appeared periodically — both legitimate tools collecting data for link analysis and search results.

These are the bots you want to see. They mean your site is visible, healthy, and part of the global search index. Each visit is a quiet handshake between your content and the web’s largest discovery engines.

But mixed in with those legitimate crawlers were others that weren’t so friendly.

2. The Bad — The Curious, the Aggressive, and the Questionable

Next came the grey zone — crawlers that weren’t necessarily malicious, but didn’t play by search-engine rules.

We saw IPs from Strasbourg, France hitting every SEO article in rapid sequence — hundreds of pages within minutes. That behaviour doesn’t match Googlebot’s deliberate pace; it’s typical of scrapers that clone content for third-party aggregators or backlink farms.

Other crawlers, such as those from obscure hosting providers, mimicked legitimate user agents to avoid detection — identifying as “Mozilla” or “Chrome,” but never loading images or CSS. These are the shadow crawlers, the kind that scrape your content for AI datasets or private SEO networks.

While they don’t always pose a direct threat, they can waste bandwidth, distort analytics, and even copy original material faster than Google can index it.

3. The Ugly — Direct Attack Scanners and Exploit Bots

Then came the unmistakable evidence of cyberattacks in motion.

One IP from Tokyo made over a hundred rapid-fire requests for files like shell1.php, wp-filemanager.php, system_log.php, and db.php. These aren’t accidents — they’re targeted scans looking for leftover installation scripts or vulnerable plugins.

Another bot from Seoul attempted to access fake files like /apikey.php and /wp-plain.php.suspected.
Meanwhile, IPs from Frankfurt, Paris, and Moscow probed deeper — requesting .env files, phpinfo.php, and /plugins/ folders. These are reconnaissance patterns used to find entry points before an exploit attempt.

They didn’t succeed — but they revealed just how constantly automated systems test every WordPress site on the web, every single day.

A Pattern Emerges

The data showed an important truth: not all visitors are created equal.
Some come to index your site, some come to copy it, and others come to break it. But by analysing logs daily and learning to separate one from the other, we gained a new kind of visibility — a real-time map of both opportunity and risk.

Turning Threats into Intelligence: The Power of Dual-Purpose Data

Once we separated the good from the bad, a question emerged:
Could the same data that reveals threats also strengthen our SEO?

The answer, we found, was yes — absolutely.

Our daily crawl logs weren’t just warning signs; they were intelligence reports. Every line told a story: which pages search engines valued most, which content attracted bots pretending to be browsers, and where unknown IPs kept reappearing.

By rethinking how we read this data, we turned a routine SEO exercise into a form of digital reconnaissance — protecting the site while refining its visibility.

From Data Collection to Pattern Recognition

Instead of viewing logs as technical clutter, we began analysing them as a conversation between the website and the internet.

Each crawl revealed patterns:

Googlebot visiting a blog series more frequently — a sign that content was trending.
PetalBot exploring category archives — suggesting strong internal linking.
Unknown IPs hammering the same outdated directory — a prompt to tighten security there.

This dual-purpose reading gave us both SEO direction and security awareness in one go. We no longer just asked, “What’s ranking?” — we asked, “What’s being targeted?”

That shift in mindset turned passive monitoring into active insight.

Preventing Problems Before They Begin

When the data showed repeated requests for non-existent files like wp-filemanager.php, we knew it was time to block entire IP ranges.
When the same foreign crawler accessed hundreds of pages in seconds, we knew it was time to throttle requests.

These small, proactive measures stopped minor scans from becoming serious breaches.

At the same time, we began cataloguing every legitimate crawler — creating our own verified list of safe bot identities. The next time an unrecognised user agent appeared, we could tell instantly whether it belonged to a known search engine or a disguised exploit script.

Why This Matters Beyond Security

What started as a protective measure evolved into a clearer understanding of how the web really sees your site.
By knowing who’s crawling and what they’re doing, you learn:

Which pages search engines consider most important.
Which content attracts unwanted attention (and why).
How fast or slow different bots explore your structure.

This insight helps refine not only SEO architecture but also server stability and data integrity. It’s where search visibility meets cyber hygiene — and both benefit equally.

A New Mindset for Modern Site Owners

In the age of AI-driven crawlers and automated exploits, simple firewalls and analytics dashboards aren’t enough.
Website owners need intelligent observation — a system that watches for both ranking signals and security red flags at once.

That’s what the TGBarker Security Layer delivers: a bridge between SEO insight and cybersecurity foresight.
Every day’s data tells us something new, and every analysis makes the next attack a little less likely to succeed.

The Takeaway: Merging SEO and Security for the Future

The more data we gathered, the clearer it became that SEO and cybersecurity are no longer separate disciplines — they’re two sides of the same coin.

Good SEO attracts attention; good security decides which attention to allow.

Every website that ranks well becomes more visible not just to potential customers, but to automated systems — both helpful and harmful. The more successful your site becomes, the more valuable it appears to everyone, including bots that don’t have your best interests in mind.

That’s why the next generation of SEO must include active threat awareness.

From Reaction to Readiness

Most site owners discover a problem after it happens — when the site slows down, rankings drop, or files suddenly appear where they shouldn’t.
At TGBarker, we’ve chosen the opposite path: continuous observation.

Our system doesn’t just wait for alerts; it studies every crawl and connection. It learns which patterns are normal, which are new, and which don’t belong.
That readiness means fewer surprises, faster response times, and — perhaps most importantly — a calmer, more confident approach to running a secure digital business.

SEO and Security: A Shared Goal

Search engines reward websites that are stable, fast, and trustworthy — the same qualities that define good security.
By merging these disciplines, we’ve built a process that naturally strengthens both:

Security logs enhance SEO awareness.
SEO crawls highlight potential vulnerabilities.
Both rely on structure, visibility, and consistency.

It’s a synergy that not only protects your site but also improves how it’s understood and ranked by the algorithms shaping the modern web.

Final Thought: Awareness Is the Real Firewall

Firewalls, plugins, and scanners are all valuable — but the greatest defence any website can have is awareness.
By knowing what’s happening beneath the surface — who’s visiting, how they behave, and what patterns repeat — you stay one step ahead of threats and one layer deeper into understanding how search truly works.

At TGBarker, that awareness has become part of our DNA.
It’s the foundation of a modern SEO practice — one that doesn’t just chase rankings but also protects the digital ground those rankings stand on. Take action here we can help.

Take the Next Step: Protect and Understand Your Website

If you’d like to know what’s really happening behind the scenes of your website — which bots are visiting, where your crawl activity originates, and how to protect your SEO performance from malicious scans — TGBarker can help.

We combine technical SEO monitoring with advanced traffic intelligence to keep your site visible, fast, and secure.

Contact us today to discuss a custom monitoring plan or request a live security analysis of your site.

Website Hacked Stop Attackers | TGBarker Author