Title: Plugin Causes Google Penalty
Last modified: August 24, 2016

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# Plugin Causes Google Penalty

 *  [Juba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brightonseo/)
 * (@brightonseo)
 * [11 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/)
 * Just a word of caution to plugin users.
    The plugin has a habit of blocking Googlebot
   and returns excessive errors in Webmaster Tools which resulted in my first page
   rank being completely removed and now the site no longer appears in SERPS. For
   those who rely on Google rankings to generate revenue, this plugin could destroy
   any chance you have unless the developers come up with something that will not
   get in the way of crawlers. PS, I allow the bots to crawl everything so it’s 
   not the Robots txt file but what iThemes writes to the htacess file.
 * Developers, you need to fix this or come up with something that remedies this
   problem because it damages websites in Google.
 * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/)

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [iThemes Support](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ithemes-support/)
 * (@ithemes-support)
 * [11 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/#post-5991915)
 * Hey Brightonseo,
 * If you disable the default blacklist does that help? I’m curious if this is causing
   an issue for you. We’re planning on getting this updated to be more efficient.
 * Thanks,
 * Gerroald
 *  Thread Starter [Juba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brightonseo/)
 * (@brightonseo)
 * [11 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/#post-5991916)
 * Sadly, I’ve had to delete the plugin from my sites as it’s just crazy to take
   such a risk.
    I hope you get it fixed for other users though because it simply
   destroys businesses.
 *  [Mitch Menghi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/menkom/)
 * (@menkom)
 * [11 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/#post-5991925)
 * WOW this is bad if that is the case, can iThemes please test this and confirm
   if this is infact an issue…. dont rely on us users to be guinea pigs and see 
   if it breaks websites like this…
 * Do your due diligence and report back if this is infact an issue.
 * Cheers.
 *  Thread Starter [Juba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brightonseo/)
 * (@brightonseo)
 * [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/#post-5991944)
 * It is the case menkom. it’s been a week and the site has still not appeared on
   Google. It was #4 on first page before this debacle.
    As you can imagine, i’ve
   gone past the stage of caring anymore as this plugin has destroyed the hard work
   and effort to get there. Even if it does recover, i doubt it will attain the 
   same rank.
 * Seeing as the plugin blocks Google from crawling the site, I suppose the one 
   thing that’s good is that you’ll never be hit by Panda or Penguin because you’re
   not in Google anyway.:)
 * I now use Cloudflare for all my sites and I advise others to follow this idea
   because using this iThemes plugin is very dangerous and just not worth the risk.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Plugin Causes Google Penalty’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/better-wp-security/assets/icon.svg?rev=3529351)
 * [Kadence Security – Password, Two Factor Authentication, and Brute Force Protection](https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/better-wp-security/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/better-wp-security/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/better-wp-security/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/better-wp-security/reviews/)

 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Juba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brightonseo/)
 * Last activity: [11 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-causes-google-penalty/#post-5991944)
 * Status: not resolved