There are increasing concerns about website attacks on the mind today, thanks to hackers’ takedown of high-profile sites during the Wikileaks cyberwar in particular, and the website defacements that often accompany political turmoil such as those that hit both Pakistani and Indian government-run sites recently as well as some prompted by political issues here in the U.S. Sometimes the hacks are more akin to pranks, while other times they serve as a way for those with strong opinions to express that sentiment anonymously. And sometimes, the hacks are initiated by spammers, instead of these sorts of political hacktivists.
To defend against this form of online vandalism, Google has announced it will begin to identify hacked sites, right in the Google search results.
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According to news from Google’s Webmaster Central blog, the Internet search giant will begin warning Web surfers of sites that may have been hacked with a message that reads “This site may be compromised.” This will help protect those browsing the Web from becoming victims of malware, as is especially the case when sites are compromised by spammers, says Google.
Users clicking the warning link will be directed to this page in Google’s Help Center that explains more about the notice and what it means, but Google will not stop you from clicking through on the search result itself, nor does it insert an additional warning after doing so, as it does with sites known to host malware.
Google says it will use “a variety of automated tools” to detect signs of hacked sites as quickly as possible and it will then add the notification and alert the site’s webmaster to the issue. Webmasters who are worried that the notices will negatively affect their search traffic can request a site review to accelerate the notification’s removal once this problem has been resolved.
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