We all know that the Internet is a big place filled with lots of content from every different niche that you can and cannot think of. With this in mind, there may be content out there on the web that you do not trust and could be violated by, and not really any way of notifying the user of this, because SEO has become so easy for webmasters to “disguise” their website as a non-malicious website.

While searching random sites within search engine results, you may have come across sites where your browser reports that the site you attempted to view may have malicious content and possibly harm your computer. As a directory editor myself, while reviewing websites to be added to the directories that I moderate, I do tend to see message this on occasion. This is starting to become a big problem, especially since piracy and malicious content writers are working on different ways to get your website/computer hacked.

This past week, the search engine giant Google has made a way for you, the user/consumer, to differentiate quality and genuine websites from malicious or compromised websites. You will see a notification in the Google SERPs (right below the listing title) stating that “This site may be compromised,” as shown in the image below from the Official Google Blog.

(Note: Matt Cutts’ blog has NOT been compromised. The image was modified by Google for illustrative purposes.)

After the “This site may be compromised” link has been clicked, the user will be directed to a Google Help Center article that elaborates why the website in question was flagged for this reason in greater detail.

From an SEO standpoint, this could be a different way that users can read the SERPs and how different website rankings could be placed. Even though a compromised site may rank higher than a genuine website in the SERPs, it does not mean that it has better content. There should be a way for “compromised sites” to either a) automatically have their listing removed, or b) moved to a temporary area within the SERPs, because some websites may not always remain compromised forever.

What is your opinion concerning this new feature in the SERPs from Google? Please leave your feedback in the comments section of this article below.