If Google has labeled your website with malware warnings, here is the reason for that. Google has in an effort to tackle that provided new help resources so that site owners will know how Google searches their sites, which will also include Google’s Safe Browsing anti-malware platform. This will help to tell if a site has been hijacked.
A security warning to users of the site is sent when Google Safe Browsing finds security issues on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, pointing users to a malicious web page. This will continue until the site owner solves the issue. After resolving the issue, the owner will use Search Console to request for a review so that the warning will be removed.
With the Search Console’s Security Issues report, site owners will be able to know what the problem is. There will be more detail regarding the particular issue. This will also include “tailored recommendations for each type of issue, including sample URLs that webmasters can check to identify the source of the issue, as well as specific remediation actions that they can take to resolve the issue.”
Site owners are encouraged to register their website in Google’s Search Console, which is what it uses to send security notifications once detected.
According to Google’s Transparency Report, it has issued out not more than 60, 000 browser warnings weekly through its Safe Browsing. In search results, they have issued out 30, 000 to 40, 000 warnings. Phishing sites and unwanted software are not excluded.
Some of the findings discovered in the study carried out by University of California, Berkeley, and Google, last year where 800, 000 sites were given the malware warning will be addressed.
The study looked into ways that site owners can best be reached and they found out that sites that have registered with Search Console from Google fared better.
Also discovered in the study is the fact that some websites are easily re-hijacked which is mainly because the owners did not address the issue. This mainly resulted in the loss of traffic.
Popular content-management systems like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and VBulletin also fell as victims to hijack in the study. The major reason for this is not far-fetched to outdated versions.
