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We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses (such as webmaster@example.com or postmaster@example.com) and essentially got zero pickup. That

We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses (such as webmaster@example.com or postmaster@example.com) and essentially got zero pickup. That's one of the reasons we provide Webmaster Tools, and so far it's our best channel to notify small business owners. We can sometimes label sites as hacked in the search results, but Webmaster Tools is definitely the preferred channel for communication of stuff like this.

x3c 13y ago
Thanks for the clarification, Matt. Does such an action from google also include penalizing the website in terms of page rank and search rankings?
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Yes, but it varies, because we have automatic malware detection, automatic hacked site detection, and manual hacked site detection. For example, if we manually detect that a subdirectory of a site is hacked, we may remove only that subdirectory from our search results. If your entire site is hacked, then your entire site may be demoted or removed until the site is clean.
larrys 13y ago
"We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses" Ironic since the original reason for the tech contact was exactly to be notified for issues like this. Would like to add that as a registrar though we get a reasonably good response to emails that we send. [1] Perhaps there is something about getting an email from google that says "it's probably spam". Or any large well known company that is often the subject of spam attempts. Even given that though it's hard for me to believe that the results were close to zero. [1] We also find that when a domain is deleted for non payment the person frequently claims they received no email notice but then proceeds to make some reference to something that was on the email notice.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Man, we could talk about this for hours. There's a lot of nuances involved in trying to alert site owners to issues, especially at a large scale. We've tried about 6-7 approaches over the years, and I'm still not completely happy with where we are. Freehosts are especially tough (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) because whois would just never work there.
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x3c 13y ago

Thanks for the clarification, Matt. Does such an action from google also include penalizing the website in terms of page rank and search rankings?

Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Yes, but it varies, because we have automatic malware detection, automatic hacked site detection, and manual hacked site detection. For example, if we manually detect that a subdirectory of a site is hacked, we may remove only that subdirectory from our search results. If your entire site is hacked, then your entire site may be demoted or removed until the site is clean.

larrys 13y ago

"We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses" Ironic since the original reason for the tech contact was exactly to be notified for issues like this. Would like to add that as a registrar though we get a reasonably good response to emails that we send. [1] Perhaps there is something about getting an email from google that says "it's probably spam". Or any large well known company that is often the subject of spam attempts. Even given that though it's hard for me to believe that the results were close to zero. [1] We also find that when a domain is deleted for non payment the person frequently claims they received no email notice but then proceeds to make some reference to something that was on the email notice.

Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Man, we could talk about this for hours. There's a lot of nuances involved in trying to alert site owners to issues, especially at a large scale. We've tried about 6-7 approaches over the years, and I'm still not completely happy with where we are. Freehosts are especially tough (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) because whois would just never work there.

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