I was hoping Jasmine would post about this experience, but since we’re over a month since it happened, it’s clear she’s not going to. So, I wanted to post here to help all of you keep this from happening to your site.

First off, as some of you may have seen, back in September Jasmine Star’s blog got hacked. I’m by no means close with her, so I don’t have any of the details on exactly how it happened, however, I was one of the first people to notice and sent her an email detailing how to fix it. The implications of this were that anyone using the Firefox browser got the message posted at the top of this page and worse, anyone searching on Google saw that nasty warning below her listings that “This Site May Harm Your Computer” and instead of going to her site, was redirected to a warning page. This lasted for 5 days. Now, I know that probably didn’t hurt Jasmine’s business, but for many of us here, 5 days of a tainted site could be much more damaging. I don’t want to see hat happen to anyone here. What’s worse, it could have been avoided. With no knowledge of websites and a little time, you can keep this from happening to you and have Google work for you instead of against you.

As my mother used to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so here’s the core of the problem. Google thought someone was using her site to load malicious software. Firefox takes it’s cues from Google, so really this wasn’t as much a problem with the site itself, as it was with communicating with the search engines. Jasmine never bothered to register her site with the major search engines. Had she done that, Google would have sent her an email ahead of time that they noticed something was wrong. She could have forwarded that to her webmaster or taken care of it herself and never had that blemish on her site.

So how do you register with Google? It’s easy. Just go here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

If you have a Google Account, you can use that one, or sign up for a new one. Once inside, just enter your website and follow the instructions.

Basically, you have two options, but depending on your web skillz, either may require a little help.

Option 1: Upload a file to your site. If you’re familiar with FTP, this is the easiest way, you just upload a blank file with the name they give you and you’re done.

Option 2: Use a meta Tag. If you’re using a content management system (or blog like WordPress) this may be easier. You can often add meta tags in your settings.

Plus, there are other huge benefits to using Google Webmaster Tools. Google will tell you the keywords they think your site is about (great for SEO!). They’ll tell you if your sitemap is working (or tell you how to get one if you don’t have one). Ultimately, Google will show you everything they know about your site, so if you’re looking to be involved with the search engines (or are working on any sort of SEO), this is an invaluable tool.

So what do you have to do if your site is already on this list? Surprisingly, it’s the same process. You have to contact Google. Only they can lift the warning, so it’s better to be proactive and do it before you have a problem. If you’re concerned about potential viruses on your site, you can visit Unmask Parasites and get a full diagnostic of your site, free.

Hopefully this is helpful and if anyone has problems or questions, please feel free to post them below or contact me directly. I’m glad to help.

Happy Shooting!

P.S. For bonus points, go register with Yahoo here: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. It’s roughly the same process, but this one gives you link information too!