14 DAY TRIAL // Google has introduced a new type of search result notification that warns users about links to websites showing signs of possible compromise.
The warning reads "This site may be compromised" and is different than the "This site may harm your computer" one that has existed for some years now.
The latter is displayed only for websites suspected of hosting malware, while the new alert is also shown for legit compromised websites used for spam.
This scenario is actually very common today when Google search is full of black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO) campaigns that poison results with so-called "doorway" pages.
In such attacks, rogue pages with content related to popular search topics are created on compromised websites and served to Google's crawlers for indexing.
However, when real users try to access these pages, they get redirected to rogue online pharmacies or scareware distribution sites.
Unlike search results tagged with "This site may harm your computer," which display detailed warnings when clicked, links accompanied by the new notification will function normally.
"We use a variety of automated tools to detect common signs of a hacked site as quickly as possible. When we detect something suspicious, we’ll add the notification to our search results," Gideon Wald, associate product manager at Google, explains.
But users are not the only ones who will benefit from this new feature. Webmasters will be notified if their websites were tagged as compromised through the Google Webmaster Tools service.
In the absence of a Google Webmaster Tools account, the company will try to contact site owners through any email contacts listed on their sites.
The notifications automatically go away a few days after the problems get fixed, but concerned webmasters can also manually request a review to speed up the process.