Google To Increase Abuse Alerts To Webmasters

By Matt McGee

Published: March 1, 2010 at 8:22 pm

Saying that web site hacking and other forms of abuse is on the rise, Google has announced plans to step up the notifications it sends to webmasters when the company finds these problems.

Beginning this month, Google will use the Message Center area in Google Webmaster Tools to notify site owners about

Spammy or abused user-generated content
Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam
Suspected hacking

When possible, the alerts will include specific pages that Google believes have been compromised by a third party.

In order to receive the alerts, webmasters obviously need to be signed up and have verified their site(s) in Webmaster Tools. Site owners who haven’t done that yet will be able to retrieve messages from Google going back a year.

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About the author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.