Google to tell you how your site was hacked

New Webmaster tools will show you why Google is warning users off your site and what the Googlebot sees.

Google on Monday rolled out a new service to help Webmasters identify malware that may have been slipped into their sites. The new tool will show Webmasters of sites flagged as "unsafe" just what the offending code is.

Google tries to discover malware with automated scanners that detect some forms of it on the websites it indexes. If such code is detected, the browser is triggered to warn users that they are about to visit an unsafe site. Often Webmasters are unaware that their sites have been hacked and flagged.

According to the Google Online Security Blog

We're happy to announce that we've launched a feature that enables Google to provide even more detailed help to webmasters. Webmaster Tools now provides webmasters with samples of the malicious code that Google's automated scanners detected on their sites. These samples — which typically take the form of injected HTML tags, JavaScript, or embedded Flash files — are available in the "Malware details" Labs feature in Webmaster Tools.

Registered webmasters (registration is free) of infected sites do not need to specially enable the feature — they will find links to it on the Webmaster Tools dashboard. Webmasters will see a list of their pages that we found to be involved in malware distribution and samples of the malicious content that Google's scanners encountered on each infected page. In certain situations we can identify the underlying cause of the malicious code, and we'll provide these details when possible. We hope that the additional information will assist webmasters and help prevent their visitors from being exposed to malware.

This information from Google certainly can't replace a more thorough investigation by the company over malware injections discovered on their Web sites, but it will at least let users know why Google is warning visitors away from their site.

Likewise, Google on Monday also announced a tool that will let registered Webmasters see what Google sees when it crawls a site. The "Fetch as Googlebot" will give realtime feedback on what the bot sees when it's crawling your page, reports the Webmaster Central Blog. The "Fetch As" tool isn't an end-all way to understand how Google is ranking your page, but it can at least help you identify the obvious problems if you discover that your site isn't ranking high for the keywords you want.

If you've got registered sites in the Webmaster Tools section, you can find the Fetch as GoogleBot app under the Labs’ menu heading in your webmaster tools console.

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