We use Google all the time. Little do we know that it can be a great tool for notifying us that our website has been targetted by spammers and use it as a link farm for profit.

Using Google Alerts, we can set up an email alert to imediately notify us if when Google crawled unexpected keywords, phrases on your site.

Here’s how you do it:

1. go to Google Alerts (log in or signup if you aren’t a member yet)
2. enter this on the search terms – “viagra OR cialis OR levitra OR Phentermine OR Xanax site:your-domain-name-here.com“
3. select comprehensive on the “type”
4. choose email on the “deliver to”
5. select as-it-happens on the “how often” field

Now, using this isn’t a substitute for proactively checking and protecting your website. Even if this may sound like a reactive solution (because it already happened and it’s already on its way to Google’s index), this is a good way (probably the best) to be alerted whenever some malicious cracker uses your site as a staging ground for link farms.

I would never have known it sooner until an organization I’m involved with in the Philippines got cracked 2 days ago. Good thing I had my Google Alerts set up for that website and quickly reacted to the situation.

I also setup a Gmail filter to send me these kinds of alerts to my mobile phone. I guess this is another good topic next time.

Lastly, I’ve found Google Alerts to be quite reliable. A Yahoo Alerts backup plan won’t hurt either. Like I always say, it’s better safe than sorry.

Tags: "google alerts", "spam links"

This entry was posted by AJ Batac on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 10:21 am and is filed under Tools, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.