Has Your Website Been Hacked?
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Traffic is one of a site's most important assets, because it is the primary element of conversions leading to sales. The number one source of website traffic is primarily search engines, led by Google. However, search engines do aim to provide the best results for their users, so they will seriously penalize websites which are known to be hacked and hosting malware in their domains. Unfortunately, it's possible for a site to be hacked without the owner or webmaster knowing about it.
It has been stated very clearly under Google's search quality guidelines: "Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware." Of course, what really happens today is that it is not you who is responsible for putting malware in your website; it is usually the result of successful hacking activity.
This tutorial will show you the most important ways of detecting the presence of malware in your website as early as possible. If malware is detected very early, it will not cause serious damage to both your websites and your visitors. Also, this tutorial is aimed at online entrepreneurs and website owners who are not technically inclined or do not have wide experience in online security.
Does Google find malware in your website?
Let's start with the most important as well as the easiest approach. Google has the most effective tools for detecting malware in your website that result from hacking. First, follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Go to http://www.google.com/
Step 2: In the search box, type this (replace "yourdomain.com" with your specific domain name):
site: yourdomain.com
If you want Google to provide the maximum result of indexed pages (and you do), do not include "www" or your subdomain name in the query. Always use your domain name only. For example, my website is www.php-developer.org and I have a domain named blogs.php-developer.org as well as other sub-domains like tools.php-developer.org, or even an https version, and so on and so forth. You can check all of the indexed pages with only one command:
Step 3: When you press enter, Google will provide all the indexed pages in your website. However, it will show only 10 results per page (default). If you have thousands of indexed URLs, then this checking process might take a while. So to increase the number of results per page, click the "Advanced search" link besides "search" button. Under "Need more tools," change the "Results per page" from 10 to 100 and then press "Advanced search." Google should now display 100 results per page.
Also, at the bottom of the search results, click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" to display hidden results.
Step 4: Look for a result that is flagged with "This site may harm your computer." Google found malware hosted on that URL. Of course, if you get tired of looking for this phrase in each result separately, you can always select all (Control-A) and then Find (Control-F) the text "This site may harm your computer."
If you find one, then someone did break into your website and plant malware. Here is a sample screen shot of this result:
Next: Use Google Webmaster Tools and Xenu Sleuth >>
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