Google adds warnings in search for shady sites

Google has been warning Web surfers about sites that appear to be hosting malware in search results for years. Now, the company is adding a warning in search results when the site appears to be compromised but may not be actually downloading malware to visitors' computers.

Starting today, Google search users should start seeing a new hyperlink warning that says "This site may be compromised," adjacent to some results if Google's system has detected something on the site that would indicate that it has been hacked or otherwise compromised. Clicking on the warning link leads to a Help Center article with more information.

"If a site has been hacked, it typically means that a third party has taken control of the site without the owner's permission," the article says. "Hackers may change the content of a page, add new links on a page, or add new pages to the site. The intent can include phishing (tricking users into sharing personal and credit card information) or spamming (violating search engine quality guidelines to rank pages more highly than they should rank)." Web surfers can also just click on the result to go directly to the site.

For more on this story, read Google search results warn of compromised sites on CNET News.