The most damaging thing that can happen to a site's search presence.
WHAT HAPPENED
Search engines detected malicious content, spam pages, or redirects. They may have applied a warning, removed pages, or both.
CHECKING
Search Console reports security issues and manual actions. Read what it says specifically.
Search for your site and see whether a warning appears.
THE ORDER OF WORK
- Clean the site completely. Requesting a review before it is clean wastes the attempt and lengthens the process.
- Close the entry point: update everything, change all passwords, remove backdoors.
- Check for spam pages and content injected into existing pages.
- Check for redirects affecting only mobile visitors or only search referrals, which are designed to be invisible to the owner.
- Remove any spam URLs from the index once removed from the site.
- Request a review in Search Console, explaining what was wrong and what you did.
RECOVERY
Warnings are usually lifted within days of a successful review. Ranking recovery takes longer.
PREVENTING RECURRENCE
A cleaned but unhardened site is compromised again within days.
