Ad Exploit Currently in Progress. Google Takes Attitude!

Google is not only the best search engine on the web but it also represents a main source of traffic for most of the websites available out there in the wild. But sometimes, a simple flaw discovered in a website is enough to destroy the entire system and reduce the amount of traffic coming from Google. If you're a webmaster you surely know it. If not, let me explain what I am talking about. Google wants to provide only secure results which redirect the users to clean websites. That's why the Mountain View company made a deal with StopBadware.org in order to identify the websites flagged as dangerous and to inform the users about the presence of some threats.

But, sometimes the technology can take unfair decisions and flag the websites as dangerous even if they made no changes to the content of the page. This is exactly what happened a few days ago. It seems like it all started from a couple of advertisements published on several websites (which are now flagged as dangerous).

Apparently, the adverts were affected by a serious glitch that included a malicious code into the pages' content which attempted to install adware tools on visitors' computers. Obviously, the website owner has no fault for this issue since the flaw was discovered in the adverts published on the website. But on the other hand, the vendor, which is the provider of the ads for the page and is responsible for their security, cannot be blamed since it pays for this and it really needs users' clicks.

Now, Google quickly took attitude and flagged the websites as dangerous without any notification, alert or email sent to the owners. Moreover, it was reported that some of the websites were working with famous security companies which can guarantee at any time that the pages are clean. However, Google states the websites are dangerous, a notification which seriously affects their traffic.

"Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!" Google alerts the visitors every time they try to visit a flagged page. At this time, there is not much to do unless requiring a review from StopBadware and hope the Google folks will open their eyes and become a little bit more receptive to users' opinion. Until then, who is going to pay for the loss of traffic of the affected websites?