[tzs]

I had a similar thing happen on my personal site, also due to phpBB2. The bad guys used an exploit in phpBB2 to upload a bunch of images of ads for cheap drugs and male enhancement products, and then they spammed links to those images to websites and in email.

I have no idea if Google noticed or cared, because I had nothing on my site that I expected people to find via search. I did have one page, some analysis I wrote on how to beat a particular puzzle, that was #1 on searches for how to beat that puzzle on both Google and Bing, and it stayed #1 [1].

[1] It's pretty funny. The page is just a simple page of mostly text, with some tables. No attempt has been made to optimize for search. There are very few incoming links, and one outgoing link (to a domain that once had an online version of the puzzle in question, but whose registration lapsed and is now owned by a noodle soup chain). I posted maybe one or two links to the page in comments I made on discussions of that puzzle a dozen years ago, and have done no other promotion of it. Yet for over a decade, it has been #1 on Google and Bing for searches on how to beat that puzzle. I have no idea why. (I have not named the puzzle or linked to the page here because I do not want to do anything that might disturb the situation. I'm curious to see how long it stays #1 without any promotion).

[npsimons]

This is the way search should work, and it only goes to show how well Google is doing it. People shouldn't have or even want to do SEO, they should just make great content and wait for their rankings.