In SEO news, Malware and hacked sites are always news, but when Google announces that 12-14 million search queries everyday return warnings regarding this problem it is big news. On the heels of that cam an announcement from Google Security announcing a little bit about what they are doing to address the problem. For anyone that doesn’t know what the Google warnings mean in any detail, here is a quick overview of what the difference in the two is.
Sites that have been hacked or infested with malware are labeled as either compromised or harmful. If a site is labeled compromised,, it means it has been hacked. Usually the links have been changed, but it doesn’t generally pose a threat. Warning means the site has been hacked and possesses malware which will almost definitely infect your computer. That is what most users are used to seeing.
What Google is doing is trying to identify these sites faster and notify webmasters as to the status of any sites that have been labeled with compromised or harmful tags so they can get them cleaned up. It may not sound like much, but with about 9500 new sites being under these categories everyday, it is a massive undertaking. SEOs and webmasters need to be on the watch for any of these notifications.
