Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Google Webmaster got a problem

Google and StopBadware.org have been providing a service to users of the search engine by warning of links to potentially dangerous sites. Such warnings may be news to webmasters of those sites, as they may not realize they have been compromised.

Google improved upon its communication with those webmasters, as noted in an update to the Google Webmaster Central blog. The process for removing malware warnings from a cleaned-up site should be quicker now.

After reviewing Webmaster Tools for URLs Google considers dangerous, the webmaster can make changes and request a malware review from Google. If it clears the review, malware messages should be removed within 24 hours, generally.

If the review finds more problems, Google will update the list of dangerous URLs it has detected for webmasters to check. Causes of positive detections can vary; StopBadware lists common threats that will cause Google to warn people against continuing to a site from the search results.

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