I'm not sure of the correct terminology, so please excuse the somewhat ambiguous title.
We've recently taken a hit to our Google rankings. As far as we can tell, the sequence of events is as follows:
- We launched a server providing development services in our cloud provider
- We assigned a public IP address we've leased from the provider
- We add DNS entries pointing a subdomain of our primary domain at the server
devtool.company.com
- We retired the box and released the IP address
- We didn't remove the DNS entry
- Someone else leased the IP address and started hosting junk
- They directly (or Google indirectly?) found that content via our subdomain
The result is that some spammers have gained google rank from our "association" for a while, at least until Google spotted it and now we've taken a hit in return.
In hindsight, we should've used different domains for different purposes, but setting that aside...
We've fixed the problem, and are submitting a request to Google in an attempt to undo the damage.
For the moment, we're going to hold on to IP addresses until we've either automated the DNS entry removal or come up with a better solution.
My questions are...
Is this a common attack type (and if so, what's it known as)? Are there any steps we should take immediately?