So Google has rolled out a new service to protect its users from malicious software. The basic idea is that if Google has identified a particular site as being a host to viruses or other harmful content, they won’t actually give you a real link to those sites if they appear in your search results. Instead, clicking on the link takes you to a warning page that explains that they have deemed the page dangerous. If the user really wants to go there, they’ll have to copy and paste the URL. (screenshots are available in the link above, in case you don’t want to do any “questionable” searches on your own computer just to see what it looks like).
I have mixed feelings about it. For the most part, it will be a very valuable service to most users, so overall it’s obviously a good thing. The only part I don’t like is that it doesn’t seem like they’re very transparent with why a particular site is put on the naughty list. I understand that they can’t go into too much detail for fear of giving too much inside info away to people trying to game the system, but it would be nice if they at least tagged the entries with generalities that would indicate the nature of the threat from that particular page, or (even better, but less likely) more technical details about the specific potential for harm.
I thought that Jeff Atwood (author of the article linked above) raised another interesting question on this matter as well: for some sites (specifically those related to teaching people how to cheat Google’s ranking system) don’t get listed in the results at all, whereas these sites which are actually dangerous (in contrast to the former) are still listed. I’d like to see them at least be consistent, but I wouldn’t want them to err on the side of not listing the sites they consider “bad” either, so the only option I’d really be OK with would be for them to use this newer method on all sites they wish to discriminate against. Obviously, they won’t do that, since they want/need to try to prevent people from seeing those SEO cheats.