Tuesday, November 14, 2006
As part of our efforts to protect users, we have been warning people using Google search before
they visit sites that have been determined to distribute badware under the
guidelines
published by StopBadware. Warning users is only part of the solution, though; the real win comes
from helping site owners 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
https://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 site owners
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.
How we apply this
We archive Search Central announcements because client questions often trace back to a change that was announced years ago. Reading the original is faster than reconstructing it from second-hand summaries.
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