Google's Malware Warnings Can Be Subdomain or Subfolder Specific

Dec 23, 2008 - 7:35 am 2 by
Filed Under Misc Google

No one likes it when they get malware on their computers due to an infected site. So that is why Google tries to warn searchers when a site may have malware on it. But Google tries to be as specific as possible, when it comes to malware warnings.

In fact, when possible, Google will report malware issues on subdomains or subfolders only and leave the root domain alone. JohnMu of Google said in a Google Webmaster Help discussion thread:

We try to keep malware labels as specific as possible based on our data. If we can see that it's limited to a specific subdomain, we'll do that. If we can recognize that it's limited to a specific subdirectory, even better. The general problem is that it's often not trivial to find the most specific part of a site that is affected by malware - and with CMSs as they are there's often no clear folder-type structure that we can work with.

That is why a specific blogspot.com blog can be reported as having malware, whereas the main domain will be safe.

Safe Browsing Diagnostic page for blogspot.com

What is the current listing status for blogspot.com? This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 227 time(s) over the past 90 days.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

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