Google’s Anti Virus Warning: This site may harm your computer

Who else saw Google’s “This site may harm your computer” warning on Saturday 31st Jan 2009 at around 2pm GMT time???

I sure did, it appeared for every search I completed using Google UK (with World Wide results); the default search engine for nearly 85% of the UK population (Hitwise data Dec 08).

View the screen grab of SERPs and the Malware Warning displayed to all users who clicked on a link:

It appeared that Google had updated their Security warning and raised the settings a little too high! This release was quickly rolled back and normal Google service quickly resumed with the whole episode lasting no more than a couple of hours.

But take a look at the screen grabs below. The impact of Google’s heightened security warning has had a clear impact on both EGpropertylink.com and Flightglobal.com’s Organic search visits.

This comes as a stark warning to those sites which rely on Google as their major source of traffic acquisition. If Google “stops liking you” or Google has a prolonged incident as described above then that could prove very costly indeed.

All your eggs in one basket anyone?!