Zone Gadget

Google Errror: "This site may harm your computer" Accompanied Each and Every Search Result

During this early morning around 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST, Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer". Google explains it is a human error. However, Google engineers worked very quickly to fixed the problem in about half an hour, and it's back to normal now. The problem is that Google works with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to maintain a list of dangerous sites which is updated periodically and manually. As human error, the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs.

We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning.

the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

[googleblog]