Random Search Terms Appearing in Last 5 Search Terms

Question

Today I checked the admin dashboard of our Magento 1.9.2.1. There are some random strings and characters, for example;

vvUf")(,[,"'"

Also, I see people searching for movies I have never heard of. For example, naseeb full movei hd. We do not have extensions. We are using the Universal built by Meigee.

What could be the issue and how do I resolve?

Answer 1

Likely spammers, bad bots, and similar bad actors scraping your site or looking for SQL injection vulnerabilities. You can delete the bad search terms from the Magento admin so they don't show up in the suggestions.

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are shady sites linking to your site, which can cause some strange search terms to show up.

With enough digging in Google Analytics, you could pin down where these searches are geographically coming from; I suspect you'll find that those search terms come from just one or two countries. Set up a WAF to block some of this traffic.

Finally, I would suggest signing up for a (free) service like Cloudflare which can help block some of the bad actors.