The SearchEngineLand.com was misidentified by Google’s system as being hacked and was removed from Google’s search results early Friday morning. Google has resolved the issue and SearchEngineLand should return to the Google index shortly. Google spokesperson said: “This was a case where our system misidentified the site as being hacked.” Since it was very early in the morning and I personally do not have access to Google Search Console for Search Engine Land, I was unable to find out the cause of the issue.
In its response, Google told us, “[A] message informing the site owner that we believed website was hacked would have been made available within The Google Search Console, as well as an option to request a review. However, as we discovered the error before a review request was made, we reversed the action.”
The normal process would be that someone with verified access to the Google Search Console would see the hacked message and request a review. Then Google would return the site to the Google index if there is not hack. In this case, The Google spotted the misclassification before the review was requested and processed the reversal sooner.
The good news. A Google spokesperson told us “the site should return to the index soon.” Our tech team on the West Coast is going to wake up to a good story. So what is going on here? I really honestly do not know. I hope it is a simple technical glitch where someone on the tech team pressed the wrong button and is accidentally blocking Google.
