Google Says Hacked sites Rose in 2016
Google has seen an increase in the number of hacked sites by approximately 32% in 2016 compared to 2015.
"We don?t expect this trend to slow down. As hackers get more aggressive and more sites become outdated, hackers will continue to capitalize by infecting more sites," Google said.
On the bright side, 84% webmasters who do apply for reconsideration are successful in cleaning their sites, according to Google. However, 61% of webmasters who were hacked never received a notification from Google that their site was infected because their sites weren't verified in Search Console.
Google's flags a website as a "hacked site" in Search Console when it discovers problems ranging from user-generated spam, dodgy links, sneaky redirects, cloaked images, and hidden text or keyword stuffing.
In order to provide more help to webmasters with security issues, Google has created new documentation, which can be found in Google's 2016 state of website security report.