We have all seen them Google Malware warnings in the search results, warning users not to click on the search results due to the site being infected with viruses. It is a webmaster's worst nightmare, a high ranking web page that has a warning from Google not to click on it. But as time goes on, malware and server hacks have become more and more common. Thus more and more sites & webmasters have experienced being hacked.
In fact, the issue is so common that Google has a malware details section in Webmaster Tools to address this concern. The tool is very helpful for webmasters that we hit by a malware hack. It tells you where the code is, what the code is and after you remove the malware it tells you how to resubmit to Google.
The thing is, more and more popular low-cost hosting companies are becoming targets for hackers. A Sphinn thread links to a Smackdown post that complains about GoDaddy's hosting service, claiming that it gets hit by hackers all too often. Well, it is not just them, I have clients on Network Solutions hosting that gets hacked weekly, in fact, Network Solutions has a special dial trunk (dial 3 or something) for website hacks - yea, they do! Many hosting companies have this issue, so when looking up a hosting company, maybe search for [hosting company name malware] or [hosting company name hack].
Because with all the best rankings in the word, having a malware warning under that listing will make that listing feel like a Google penalty.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
