Google has been migrating all their properties to work over SSL over the past years and they are still working on that migration process. Google would like to see you make your site work over SSL as well. So much so that Matt Cutts said at SMX West that he would personally love to make […]
In response to a string of cases where fake business/organization listings have been added to Google Maps, Google says it has removed those listings and put in place new hurdles to make it more difficult for this kind of abuse to get through its system. This latest run of problems came to light about a […]
Google has announced the addition of a new section within Webmaster Tools named “Security Issues.” This new section is aimed at better communicating to website owners security issues, such as site hacks, malware, and so on and then giving a more detailed and concise method of fixing the problem and submitting a review request. In […]
Bing Ads announced today that it has tightened account security measures by adopting extended validation SSL certificates for its website, and added a two-step verification process for users accessing Bing Ads via a Microsoft account. According to the announcement, Bing Ads began implementing an extended validation certificate a few weeks ago: All communications with Bing […]
Move over Emma Watson. Actress Lily Collins has taken the title as 2013’s most dangerous celebrity to search for online. McAfee, the security technology company, is out with its seventh annual most dangerous celebrities survey, which uses the company’s SiteAdvisor site ratings to measure what percentage of search results for popular celebrities lead to risky […]
Yandex has taken exception to a recent study that reported it has more malware in its search results than other major search engines like Google and Bing. The company shared its concerns with Search Engine Land via email, saying that it also sent the same response to AV-TEST, the German IT security firm that published […]
About three years ago, Google was labeled in one study as the “King of Malware.” Things have apparently changed a lot since then. A new study reports that Google is beating its primary search competitors pretty significantly when it comes to keeping malware out of search results. The 18-month study (PDF), done by a German […]
Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are most popular, identify anonymous FTP servers, or investigate new vulnerabilities and what hosts they could infect. It also serves as a window into millions of unsecured online connections. According to an article on […]
Google has just launched a help center for hacked sites, complete with step-by-step instructions and videos that outline each part of the process. The videos feature Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google (and her Googler colleagues), who told me “we wanted to connect our capability to detect and alert site owners of their hacked […]
Yahoo and AVG announced a new partnership deal where Yahoo will power AVG’s secure search, which will protect AVG’s customers dangerous websites and online threats. The process uses AVG’s LinkScanner technology to protect their users from malicious web sites. As we reported a couple of days ago, there was an 80% increase in the number […]
Chris Larsen from Blue Coat Security shared new statistics on the number of poisoned search results during the holiday shopping season. The new stats show an 80% jump in the number of clicks on infected search results from their last report in August. Specifically, they tracked 13,616 different clicks over 10 days, which is an […]
Almost two of every three malicious redirects in major search engines are found on Bing, according to a new report from the web security firm Sophos. Looking at data “from the last couple of weeks,” Sophos found that 65 percent of malicious search results that its web appliance blocked were from Bing. Google was responsible […]
Hey Emma Watson fans: Be really careful about clicking on those search results. McAfee, the security technology company, says Watson is 2012’s most dangerous celebrity to search for — replacing Heidi Klum, who held that title last year. According to McAfee’s Most Dangerous Celebrities study, searches related to Watson have a 12.6 percent chance of […]
Google’s security blog announced today several updates on how they have been addressing malware and hacked sites on the internet. Google said that between 12 and 14 million search queries per day return warnings that at least one of the results listed in the Google search results were compromised. Google has two types of labels […]
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 […]
Some of those who use Microsoft security software received a security patch a couple days ago that lead to malware warnings for users trying to visit Google.com. Softpedia posted a picture of the warning. Microsoft quickly learned about the issue on their support forums and issued a patch yesterday to address the issue. Microsoft didn’t […]
The Telegraph reports in “Google teams up with Citizens Advice Bureau” that Google is running its first non-Google-specific campaign in the U.K. to promote awareness for online safety. The campaign is named “Good To Know” and leads to google.co.uk/goodtoknow, where users can learn more about online safety tips. Google teamed up with the Citizens Advice […]
Do a search on Google, and you might get an unexpected surprise. A big notice at the top of your results warning that your computer has been infected with malware. Here’s an example of how it looks: What malware? Produced by whom? Google’s not giving any details there yet, simply blogging: This particular malware causes […]
Bas van den Beld received a new notification from Google Webmaster Tools that has never been seen before. The notification informs those who are running outdated WordPress installations to update them to the latest version. Here is a screen shot: Matt Cutts of Google confirmed the new notifications via Twitter saying, “we’re kicking off a […]
Having used the Samsung 10.1 Android tablet (running Honeycomb) for a number of weeks I can tell you conclusively that it doesn’t compete with the iPad. While the hardware is light and generally well designed, the overall software experience falls well short of the standard the iPad has established. An Unintentional iPad Competitor? Enter Google’s […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: What Every Search Marketer Needs To Know About Web Security All too often web site security is somebody else’s problem. It shouldn’t be. If you work on websites, you should know […]
Matt Cutts of Google announced on the Google Webmaster Blog that they have added a new notification for hacked sites to the search results. Google had malware notifications in the search results since 2007, but now Google is adding a notification for searchers to be aware that the site they may click on is hacked. […]
There are two different security issues around Google products over the past 12 hours or so. The first is with Google Website Optimizer where there was the potential of an Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack. The second is with people using Goo.gl, Google’s URL shortener, within Twitter to grab your Twitter passwords. While the second one, […]
Earlier this week, news broke that a Google employee had been fired in July for accessing the private information of a few individuals without permission, in violation of Google’s policies. Isn’t that something Google should be reporting itself, I wondered? It makes sense to me, but don’t expect Google to do so. Google already reports […]
Google has twice as much malware in its search results as Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter combined. That’s one of the findings in the Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, which will be presented tomorrow at the DEFCON 18 hacking conference tomorrow in Las Vegas. Barracuda Labs says it studied the four search engines for about […]
Anchor Intelligence released their latest click fraud report claiming the click fraud rate for the second quarter of 2010 was 28.9%. That is actually slightly down from the first quarter of this year, which was 29.2%. But yet significantly up from the prior year, the second quarter of 2009, which was 26%. Anchor Intelligence suggests […]
Google ditches Windows on security concerns from the Financial Times reports that Google is no longer installing Windows on Google owned computers. In fact, the report says that no desktop is allowed to have Windows and only under special circumstances will Google allow Windows OS on a laptop. The report cites security as the main […]
A blog post from cloud security company Zscaler suggests that some Google searches recently returned results with 90% malicious links, and the spammers are using Google Trends to do it. The example used in the post is a search for [tri energy], a phrase that was the hottest search on Google Trends on Friday, April […]
Twitter has just announced that to protect people from scams, links in direct messages and sent via email will be shortened using its own URL shortener. It’s a welcome move. Still, I was curious about any impacts this might have for good marketers who are not trying to scam people. Good news, on that front. […]
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 […]
Over the past year, I’ve moved more and more of my data over to the cloud — in particular, to being stored with Google. I’m rethinking that, in the wake of Google’s statement that it was the target of a sophisticated hacking attack. Further, I’m wondering if this entire episode — GoogleHack, for want of […]
CNet News reports that spammers and scammers are exploiting Google Doodles. As you can imagine, there are many people who click on the Google Doodle from the Google home page. Clicking on the logo will trigger a search result in Google. If you look at Google Hot Trends for yesterday, you will see that the […]
Something’s up with Google’s Chrome operating system. Don’t know what, but we’ll all know soon as a press conference begins at 10AM Pacific. I’m coming at your live from the Googleplex. Buckle up, and we’ll see what’s happening. You can also watch from home. Webcast info is here. There will also be related coverage developing […]
Danger, thy name is Jessica Biel! No, we’re not turning Search Engine Land into a celebrity gossip blog … we’re talking about the risks of searching online for certain celebrities. And, according to a McAfee report issued today, Jessica Biel is the most dangerous celebrity on the web, passing last year’s master of search disaster, […]
Somewhere online right now there’s a music fan who’s big on free downloads, likes Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” but doesn’t know the lyrics, is looking for free ringtones, uses MySpace, likes to play solitaire and wants the latest game cheats. Like many of us, s/he uses a search engine to find all of these things. […]
Yet another privacy complaint has been filed against Google with the FTC, this time by the Electronic Privacy Information Center over Google’s cloud computing services and related privacy and data security issues. While Google is the named party, the company is basically the stand-in for “the cloud” as a whole. (If you want to read […]
Google has allowed the community to edit Maps listings for some time. That capability has not been generally abused although there have been some persistent issues with mapspam. Today Barry posted at SEO Roundtable that anyone could go in and request that a business listing be permanently removed because the location was, allegedly, permanently closed: […]
If you run a popular/successful blog, there’s a pretty good chance you’re plenty familiar with hacking and how to deal with it. But hacking comes in many forms and can hit any kind of web site that isn’t secure. In a post today, Google’s Webmaster Central blog talks about ways to prevent hacking, including using […]
Recent statements suggest that Google believes it has eliminated the hijacking of claimed business listings in Google Maps, and that hijackings overall (of both claimed and unclaimed listings) are now a rarity. Speaking last week at SMX West, Google’s Jennifer Chin, also known as “Maps Guide Jen” in the Google Maps Help Forum, said that […]
Ask.com has partnered with Symantec to include a new “Safe Search” feature into the Norton 360 security suite, integrated into the Norton toolbar that is part of the suite. When a search is run from the toolbar, results are safety-rated by Symantec using a color-coded icon, to flag sites or sections of sites that may […]