Last week, Google announced that it would expand its set of security alerts in Google Analytics by alerting you if your website has been hacked.
If your site is compromised by a third party, an alert flag will be issued within the Google Analytics user interface. Google will then offer action items to help you resolve the issue. In its announcement, Google noted that in September 2015, they’d seen a 180% increase in sites getting hacked for spam compared to the previous year. You can take simple steps to increase website security like verifying your website with Google’s Search Console.
Verifying your website via Google’s Search Console gives you access to even more information from Google when your site looks suspicious.
To verify your domain with Google Search Console:
- Set up the web tracking code on your web pages.
- Go to Webmaster Central and click Add a site. Enter the URL of your site.
- Two tabs are provided: Recommended method and Alternate methods. If neither Analytics nor Google Tag Manager is recommended, select Alternate methods. Select either Analytics or Google Tag Manager and click Verify.
Research completed by Google has shown that direct contact with website owners increases the likelihood of remediation to 75%.
Also, keep in mind that prevention plays an important role in keeping your site safe. It’s always best to create a password that’s difficult to guess and, the longer your password, the better. Keeping software and plug-ins up to date will also help to keep your site safe, and, using a host who makes security a top priority, like the one we use for our clients, makes it easy to restore a clean version of your site if it becomes a victim to hackers.
As always, we’re here if you need help with verifying your website on Search Console, or to answer any questions you may have.