Google Adds Hacked Site Notifications to Search Results Pages

December 20th, 2010 · No Comments

On Friday, Dec. 17 Google successfully added a new notification feature to their search results descriptions, namely one that informs people that a site in the results of their search may have been hacked. This notifications feature will from now on appear along side the Malware Notices that Google has been providing for years. The main function and purpose of this notification is to alert users that a website they are trying to access may have been changed by a third party. Hackers usually attack websites for spamming purposes, though sometimes their intentions are much more sinister, such as stealing credit card information, passwords, and so on.

Google uses a number of different automated tools to detect signs that a site has been hacked and as soon as some such suspicious activity is detected, a notification will be added to the site’s description in search results. In addition to this, they will also try to contact the website owner as soon as possible so that they may remedy the situation. And once they are able to fix the problem, the notification will automatically be removed from the search results description within days. In this way, this new feature of Google services will not unnecessarily affect their search traffic for longer than absolutely necessary. Webmasters will also have the option to contact Google directly once the problem has been resolved in order to speed up the process of removing the notification.

If a user clicks on the “This site may be compromised” link in the search results description they will be brought to an article in the Google Help Center that explains what the problem may be in more detail. And by clicking on the actual search result will still bring users to the actual website, though this will be done at their own risk.