Google Sent 20,000+ Hacked Notification Messages To Webmasters Today

Google’s head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced on Twitter that they have sent out new message notifications to 20,000 web sites that are hacked.

Specifically, Google sent these messages to sites doing “weird redirects.” I’ve personally seen a spike in the number of sites redirecting from their web site to a non-authorized site recently. The webmaster is typically unaware of this redirect because the redirects only occur when someone clicks from Google’s search results to the web site. Typically the site owner doesn’t go to Google to find his web site; the site owner goes directly to the site.

To help webmasters and site owners become aware of this hack, Google has sent out messages to about 20,000 sites effected by this to give them the heads up.

Here is Matt Cutts’ tweet:

Is your site doing weird redirects? We just sent a “your site might be hacked” msg to 20K sites, e.g. goo.gl/S6Ptk

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 16, 2012

For more on hacked sites and malware, see this Google document.

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• Matt Cutts On Appealing Google Malware Warnings
• Google Warns Of Malware Redirecting To Its Search Results
• Google Adds Site Hacked Notifications To Search Results
• Google Search Results Now May Display Malware Warnings
• Google Warns Of Malware Redirecting To Its Search Results

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.