I wanted to properly document a recent problem I experienced with Google which I briefly mentioned in my post:
I am hoping that I can provide a few links and help others in a similar position as Google offers no easy way to locate this information. At least I found it very difficult to find truly helpful information.
The Issue
My problem started when I received the following notification from YouTube
URL: https://www.devhut.net/bypassing-microsofts-new-blocking-of-macros-vba-code/
Video where URL was found: Understanding Macro Blocking and Unblocking Google
Once Google did this, my webpage via Firefox started to load to:
I checked their policy page:
The only things that could possibly apply in this case could be: Hacking, but that wasn’t the case here in the least. Everything else was irrelevant to this video/article. Hence, I was in no way in violation of their policy! You also have to love the line “Keep in mind that this isn’t a complete list.”! So where’s the complete list? Oh ya, they don’t provide that information leaving themselves the ability to band anyone for anything at anytime. So much for transparency!
They also have a separate page for external links:
Once again, I could not see any violation in there list here either. No malware, …
So, I immediately appealed the decision and received a confirmation very quickly thereafter:
URL: https://www.devhut.net/bypassing-microsofts-new-blocking-of-macros-vba-code/
Video where URL was found: Understanding Macro Blocking and Unblocking
After taking another look, we can confirm that your content does not violate our Community Guidelines. Google
Yet, my site still remained blocked!
I waited patiently hoping that within a day or two things would fall back into place, but they didn’t! I sent e-mails by replying to the notification, using Feedback forms, but nothing ever got any form of reply.
I tried all the links provided on the warning page (they were simply generic help pages with no real information) :
and checked Google’s “Safe Browsing site status”:
but as can see for yourself, it offered absolutely no new information, nothing actionable nor did it offer any means to communicate with Google to resolve the issue. You’d think they’d provide information here “steps for webmasters to take”…
They talk about unwanted software? There’s only 1 download on the page and it’s sample code (the as present on many of my webpages) as presented on the page itself. I validated the download file and it was fine, but to be 100% safe I replaced it to ensure it hadn’t been tampered with by someone, somehow.
The Solution
I did lots of Googling (ironic, I know) and eventually found my way to Google’s Search Console (never heard of this one before):
I added a “Property” for the webpage Google was blocking and had to add a meta tag onto that page, and then was able to review the “Security issues”, which gave me:
So, basically, I spent hours to get nothing more than what I was previously supplied with. Oye.
Focusing on the statement:
I checked each link on the page. None were blocked (if they were the cause and malicious, wouldn’t Google have blocked them as well!?) and all pointed to either my own blog articles or Microsoft articles. Nothing questionable whatsoever! Nothing blocked either! Once again, Google offered no specifics, just generic statements of no real value for resolving any issue. If they truly detected something then why aren’t they providing the specific link that triggered the issue?!
Thus, I decided, since there was absolutely nothing wrong with the page and YouTube had admitted their mistake, to simply press the ‘Request Review’ button.
Several days later, I received the following notification from Google:
and then the warning page disappeared.
I still have no clue as to what the issue was, I HIGHLY suspect there never was any as the page did not change, same content as before.
Moral of the story, Google can do whatever it wants, never needs provide webmasters with any pertinent information and provided no means to communicate with them to get clarification to be able to resolve such issues!
There is something fundamentally wrong when I company, any company, can impose such actions upon you and your website, impact your reputation in this manner for days/weeks without providing detailed reason(s) (not just generic statements) and without providing any means to directly contact a live person!
I was also floored that 2 supposedly independent privacy browsers such as Firefox and Brave rely on Google for analyzing webpage ‘safety‘. This implies that they are supplying web browsing data to Google in some shape or form. So much for privacy and independence!