Have you ever been to a Web site, but instead of the website you were greeted with a warning message that said “Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer”?

If you have, then you have experienced Google’s program first-hand. Maybe it was not your site, but what if it was? What are the steps you need to take to get your site back online?

1. Go to Google’s Webmaster Tools, log in and get the information about what was detected. This will give you a clue on how to approach the removal of the malware. If you don’t have a Google account, you can also visit: www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=example.com (but instead of  ’example.com’, type in your domain name). This will also give you some information on your site, such as the status of your site, if there has been malware detected, etc.
2. Next, change all of the passwords related to the Web site (anything related to the site, e.g. FTP). One of the most common ways for malware to invade your site is by taking advantage of a weak FTP password.
3. Once the passwords have been changed you need to make sure all of your site’s software is up to date and has the latest security fixes (contact your hosting provider for more help).
4. If you have scripts on your site that you no longer use, remove them.
5. Now you should go through your site files looking for any odd code such as “<script> function ZsTvTrDzZ()..” and remove it.
6. Once you have removed all of malware from your site, you can resubmit your site to Google through Webmaster Tools. Google will scan your site again to see if it still detects malware, but this will take some time. If Google does not detect any malware then it will remove the warning page and your site will be back to normal.

For more information see:

• http://stopbadware.org/
• http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/

In the past, Googlebot, which sifts through and ranks content to determine where different sites appear in different searches, was not able to pull information from any Flash content. As of July 2009, Google officially updated how it indexes Flash content. This is great news for Flash-based sites that have dynamic content being pulled in from outside.

Since updating its Flash indexing capabilities, Googlebot can now:

• Interact the way a user would, e.g. click buttons and enter text
• Include links within Flash files
• Associate external content (html, xml or swf) with parent Flash files
• Index embedded Flash content using JavaScript libraries, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2
• Index sites scripted with AS1, AS2, and AS3 even if the ActionScript (the programming language used in Adobe Flash) is obfuscated.

These are significant improvements, but until search engines are able to index everything contained within Flash content, it is important to consider only using Flash when it is necessary. Flash is great for interactive elements such as streaming video and audio. However, if your goal is to achieve SEO value with your site, building an entire site in Flash at this point won’t merit much in return.

References:

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/Flash-indexing-with-external-resource.html
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-Flash.html