Google flagged your site as dangerous, what to do
If, instead of your site, visitors see a red warning screen saying "this site may be dangerous", it is a sign that Google (specifically the Safe Browsing mechanism) has judged it a threat. The effect is immediate and painful: people flee, and search traffic can drop almost to zero.
Why a site ends up on the blacklist
The most common causes are the results of a break-in:
- malware injected into the site's code,
- redirects of visitors to foreign, dangerous sites,
- phishing pages planted in your service,
- links to dangerous content added by the attacker.
Sometimes the reason is indirect, e.g. an ad from an external network serves something malicious. But in most cases it is a sign that someone has taken over the site.
The order of actions matters
The key rule: clean first, then ask for the warning to be removed. If you ask Google to re-verify before you remove the problem, the warning comes back and it only gets harder. You have to find the source (usually a backdoor), remove the malicious code, close the door they came through, and only then submit the site for re-checking.
Just "cleaning up the visible traces" is not enough. If you leave a backdoor, the infection returns, and the warning with it.
How long it takes
After you submit a cleaned site, Google usually removes the warning within a few hours to a few days. The cleaner and more thorough the repair, the smaller the risk of the problem returning.
We will get your site off the blacklist
We remove the malware, find and close the source, and then run the re-verification process with Google so the warning disappears and does not come back.
Is your site scaring customers with a red screen? Write to us immediately, we act fast.