https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Wed, 18 Mar 2015 21:09:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.5 https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/better-badware-notifications-for-webmasters/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=better-badware-notifications-for-webmasters https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/better-badware-notifications-for-webmasters/#comments Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:33:00 +0000 StopBadware.org. A few months ago we took the first step and integrated malware notifications into webmaster tools. I'm pleased to announce that we are now including more detailed information in these notifications, and are also sending them to webmasters via email.

Webmaster tools notifications
Now instead of simply informing webmasters that their sites have been flagged and suggesting next steps, we're also showing example URLs that we've determined to be dangerous. This can be helpful when the malicious content is hard to find. For example, a common occurrence with compromised sites is the insertion of a 1-pixel iframe causing the automatic download of badware from another site. By providing example URLs, webmasters are one step closer to diagnosing the problem and ultimately re-securing their sites.

Email notifications
In addition to notifying webmaster tools users, we've also begun sending email notifications to some of the webmasters of sites that we flag for badware. We don't have a perfect process for determining a webmaster's email address, so for now we're sending the notifications to likely webmaster aliases for the domain in question (e.g., webmaster@, admin@, etc). We considered using whois records, but these often contain contact information for the hosting provider or registrar, and you can guess what might happen if a web host learned that one of its client sites was distributing badware. We're planning to allow webmasters to provide a preferred email address for notifications through webmaster tools, so look for this change in the future.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/better-badware-notifications-for-webmasters/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/about-badware-warnings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=about-badware-warnings https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/about-badware-warnings/#comments Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:53:00 +0000
If your site has been flagged for badware, we let you know this in webmaster tools. Often, we find that webmasters aren't aware that their sites have been compromised, and this warning in search results is a surprise. Fixing a compromised site can be quite hard. Simply cleaning up the HTML files is seldom sufficient. If a rootkit has been installed, for instance, nothing short of wiping the machine and starting over may work. Even then, if the underlying security hole isn't also fixed, they may be compromised again within minutes.

We are looking at ways to provide additional information to webmasters whose sites have been flagged, while balancing our need to keep malicious site owners from hiding from Google's badware protection. We aim to be responsive to any misidentified sites too. If your site has been flagged, you'll see information on the appeals process in webmaster tools. If you can't find anything malicious on your site and believe it was misidentified, go to http://stopbadware.org/home/review to request an evaluation. If you'd like to discuss this with us or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our webmaster discussion forum.

Update: this post has been updated to provide a link to the new form for requesting a review.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/about-badware-warnings/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/badware-alerts-for-your-sites/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=badware-alerts-for-your-sites https://googledata.org/google-webmaster-central/badware-alerts-for-your-sites/#comments Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:36:00 +0000 guidelines published by StopBadware. Warning users is only part of the solution, though; the real win comes from helping webmasters protect their own users by alerting them when their sites have been flagged for badware -- and working with them to remove the threats.

It's my pleasure to introduce badware alerts in Google webmaster tools. You can see on the Diagnostic Summary tab if your site has been determined to distribute badware and can access information to help you correct this.

If your site has been flagged and you believe you've since removed the threats, go to http://stopbadware.org/home/review to request a review. If that's successful, your site will no longer be flagged -- and your users will be safer as a result of your diligence.

This version is only the beginning: we plan to continue to provide more data to help webmasters diagnose issues on their sites. We realize that in many cases, badware distribution is unintentional and the result of being hacked or running ads which lead directly to pages with browser exploits. Stay tuned for improvements to this feature and others on webmaster tools.

Update: this post has been updated to provide a link to the new form for requesting a review.

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