Google is beta testing a new feature within Google search console that will automatically remove a manual action on the site, once it has detected the hacked content has been removed from the site.

In a new blog post today Google has said that in 2015 so far they have noticed a 180% increase in the number of websites that are being hacked. And as part of their tools and options to assist webmasters who have been hacked, they have made changes to the reconsideration request process for websites that have been hacked.

If your site has been hacked, Google will often show an alert within your Google Search Console account, to let you know that they feel your site has been compromised. Google is now beta testing a new feature to assist webmasters in this process. if you have cleaned up the website, and Google can no longer find any hacked content on your site, they can now automatically remove that manual action without a webmaster having to file a reconsideration request.

This is a great change. While filing a reconsideration request should be done if you do not notice automatically removed, it is good news that this is an option, especially for those webmasters who might not realize they would need to file a reconsideration request following a manual action within the account.

That said, you definitely don’t want to just wait and see if Google will rule this automatically, for a couple of reasons. First of all, you may think you’ve removed all the house content, but there is still something else compromised are not aware of. So this can result in a delay in the amount of time it takes your site to get back in the index properly without a hacked site alert. And second, it would likely require Google to read crawl most or all of the pages on the site, in order to verify that the hacked content has all been removed. This can also add a lot of time to the process.

Google has also made some other changes over the last year to make it easier for webmasters to be alerted to hacked content as well as to get custom feedback to a reconsideration request, if they have not managed to successfully clean up content. Because many hackers employ methods that can make it difficult for a site owner to discover, such as cloaking, the “note from your reviewer” feature that launched last year has reduced the amount of time it takes for webmasters to see their manual action removed.