Awake to the fact that malware authors are adept at gaining high search rankings for their malware-fraught sites, Google has been providing malware notifications in its search results for three years now. But what about legitimate sites compromised by a third party for various nefarious ends? Now there is a notification for that as well.
The internet giant deploys a number of automated tools to detect the most common signs of a hacked site. Once a hacked site is identified, a notification conveying Google’s suspicions about it begin accompanying the site in search results.
“Clicking the ‘This site may be compromised’ link brings you to an article in our Help Center which explains more about the notice. Meanwhile, clicking the result itself brings you to the target website, as expected,” Gideon Wald, an associate product manager at Google, wrote in a blog post.
“Of course, we also understand that webmasters may be concerned that these notices are impacting their traffic from search. Rest assured, once the problem has been fixed, the warning label will be automatically removed from our search results, usually in a matter of days. You can also request a review of your site to accelerate removal of the notice.”
