There are various reasons for a site to get blacklisted by Google, McAfee Site Advisor, Norton Safe Web, Search Engine, etc.
By just looking at the Google Transparency Report, you can see millions of sites are categorized as dangerous.
A site can get blacklisted for many reasons, including the following.
- Spammy activities
- Malware infected
- Phishing activities
- Unwanted program download
- Vulnerable libraries/plugins/components used
To ensure Google or other search engine doesn’t drop the ranking or shows the warning to the users – you should not be doing anything listed above.
But sometimes it may be out of your control when a site gets hacked or malicious code injected by a plugin, module, etc. In case you are wondering, this is how a site appears in Chrome.
Or when the site is infected with the malware.
Let’s check out some of the tools which will help you to find if your site is blacklisted. Some of the following are also used to check if sending an email server is on a SPAM list.
Google Safe Browsing
One of the popular and most important ones where you can check if Google has categorized your site is unsafe.
Site Status instantly checks the given URL and give you a result if safe or unsafe.
SUCURI
SUCURI Site Check, one of the great scanner, does FREE security checks for malware, injected SPAM, defacements, and status from the following popular authorities.
- Google safe browsing
- ESET
- Yandex
- Spamhaus
- Site Advisor
- Opera
- Phish tank
- Norton
- SUCURI malware labs
SUCURI provides comprehensive web security to multiple platforms, including WordPress, Joomla, PHP, Drupal, Magento, etc. which cover monitoring, detection & protection. They also help to clean the hacked, malware-infected, defaced & blacklisted sites.
Blacklists by MX Toolbox
MX Toolbox provides a central search box to check if IP or domain is blacklisted against 102 known authorities.
If interested, you can also schedule to monitor the blacklist regularly and get notified when found so you can take necessary action immediately.
HetrixTools
You can run the test on-demand or monitor to get notified through email, SMS, Telegram, Slack, Mattermost, etc.
If you are looking for continuous blacklist monitoring, then the Hetrix solution would be worth trying. Not just a single domain or IP, but you can also add IP range to be monitored. This would be handy when you have a complete subnet to be monitored.
After monitoring web assets, if any found to be blacklisted, you can get detailed information about how to delist them. And for a web agency, if you need, you can generate white-label reports for your clients.
You can get it started with their FREE plan that offers up to 32 monitors.
Black List Alert
Black List Alert is an RHSBL (right-hand side blacklist) based lookup.
It tests given URL/IP against hundreds of whitelists and confirms if the result is positive.
WebSite Pulse
WebSite Pulse checks against the following major DNSBL (DNS-based blackhole list).
- Sorbs
- CBL
- PSBL
- NJABL
- Spamhaus
I don’t know why, but you have an option to test from NY, Germany & Australia.
Invaluement
Invaluement fast lookup let you check for up-to ten domains at once and result if domain/IP is listed in the spam list.
MultiRBL
As you can guess by the name, MultiRBL lookup against more than 300 RBL and confirm if any has blacklisted. It supports IPv4, IPv6, and domain.
Not just for checking the website, but also you can verify sending email servers.
Blacklist Lookup by Geekflare
Geekflare blacklist lookup is powered by Google Web Risk.
It checks the following threats.
- Malware
- Social engineering
- Unwanted software
You get instant lookup results of a given site.
Remove Domain/IP from the blacklist/Spam list.
I know how it feels when your site or IP address is blacklisted or in the spam list.
Fortunately, it’s possible to get it removed.
There are two possible ways.
Manually – you need to submit a request to delist the domain to respective blacklist authorities. Most of the above test results will give you an option to submit the removal from the result directly.
Hire an expert – if you don’t have the time or not comfortable doing manual work, then you can leverage the following services which will do the necessary to ensure a site is removed from the blacklist.
SUCURI – one of the industry experts in removing the blacklist, malware and providing all-in-one security protection.
And, there are more services that offer blacklist/malware removal, which is mentioned here.
Conclusion
I hope this helps you to keep your site operational and protect your business reputation.
Stay secure!