Web Site Design by Rainbo Design

Removing Malware and the Warning by Google

Google now warns users when they detect malware on a website with the ominous message "This site may harm your computer". Few people will go past that warning to your site. So, if your site has been flagged, you should take it as strong evidence that your site has been hacked and you need to take immediate action. To get the warning removed, you first have to clean up your site. This isn't really an SEO Tip, but if your site is flagged, none of your SEO efforts will help you regain your traffic. This article contains my recommendations on fixing a hacked site and how to remove Google's malware warning.

More....


website mechanic graphic

When Your Car Is Broken,
You Call A Mechanic

My SEO Tips can help you in many ways, but if your website is "broken" in the search engine results, and you can't tell how to fix it yourself, you should call in a specialist because he's trained for the job. He knows what's wrong and how to fix it. Doing it yourself is not always the wisest choice. You can end up wasting time and losing sales by taking weeks or months trying to learn what I already know about search engines.

Be smart and start getting more targeted traffic now by ordering my Search Engine Optimization Service today! You can also request my FREE Search Engine Evaluation. I'll tell you what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and how I can help your site get its fair share of search engine traffic.




What To Do When Your Site is Hacked

As I said, if Google has flagged your site, it's a virtual certainty that your site has been hacked. But many webmasters have little experience dealing with this level of security issues, so I thought I'd offer a guide to dealing with malware. These are the steps I recommend:

  • Start by doing a virus scan of the computer that you use to create your website and upload the files to your site's server. This is to insure that you have removed any virus on your local computer that can be used to alter the files for your site or to steal your FTP account information. Most people use anti-virus software as a matter of course, so it's a good idea to do this scan with software that you do not use on a regular basis. There are several good free anti-virus or malware scanning programs available online. I recommend Spybot: Search & Destroy, or Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Either one will do a thorough scan of your computer and will remove any suspicious files.

  • Change the passwords on all of the FTP Accounts for the website. Hackers are increasingly targeting FTP account access information - user name and password - to spread their infections. Changing your password on a regular basis is also a good security practice in any case.

  • Delete all of the files from the server. The best way to remove an infection is to wipe the server clean, because hackers often add files to a site that either re-infects the webpages or opens a backdoor to the site for manual access. The only files you can leave behind with relative safety are your mySQL database files, since they're almost always on a separate server and are rarely a source of malware. But if you have back-ups of your mySQL data files, you should strongly consider restoring the files on the server from those back-ups.

  • Restore the files for your website from your local back-ups. Of course, you need to make sure that your back-ups haven't been infected before you do this or you'll just be restoring the infection as well. Check the malware warning from Google to see which pages they marked as suspicious, and see if your local copies of those files are clean. It's also a good idea to check the last modification date on the local files to see if they appear to match the dates when you last updated them. If all is well, you can go ahead and restore the site.

  • Update all blog, forum, gallery, CMS, and other popular scripts to the latest version. Most hackers gain access to websites by exploiting known vulnerabilities in older versions. The people who make these scripts are usually very good at keeping up with hackers, but you need to watch for these updates and install them as soon as possible. Once you've updated the scripts on your website, be sure to update your local copy as well.

  • File a Malware Review Request through Google's Webmaster Tools console. Google will periodically re-scan a site to see if the problem has been repaired, but that can take quite some time. Filing a Review Request gets your site examined much sooner and will usually get the malware warning removed within a few days (often sooner, but...).

In summary, the key steps are: (1) Removing the malware from your site, (2) Closing any holes in your site's security, and (3) Filing a Review Request. If you follow these steps and still have trouble, you can get more help by visiting Google's Webmaster Help Forum where there are people who will examine your site and make recommendations.



If you want your site to rank higher in the search engines, my Search Engine Optimization Services can give your website what it needs to get your fair share of search engine traffic quickly, without disturbing your design, and without breaking your budget.

Search Engine Optimization Tips Main Page




Call Richard L. Trethewey in Minneapolis today at 612-408-4057 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central time to get started on your new website design package or search engine optimization program today!


Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Services

Rainbo Design Sitemap

Minneapolis Search Engine Marketing homeAffordable Custom Website Design and Search Engine Marketing by Rainbo Design Main Page