New Social Engineering Content Detected Warning in Google Search Console

Over the last day or so, Google began issuing manual actions for “social engineering content detected.”  These new warnings have a pretty confusing name that are causing people to question what exactly “social engineered content” is.

Here is the new warning:

It seems to be related to Google’s new change to the Safe Browsing program.  They recently made it so sites with deceptive advertising – such as “download button ads” which are designed to confuse site visitors, would now be flagged as deceptive.

The name is definitely confusing, simply because a huge number of webmasters have no idea what “social engineering” is or what it means. I could see where someone might think it is related to something social media – such as social media share buttons.  The description is somewhat better to alerting webmasters to what the issue is.

If you run into this warning, you will need to have a close look at the advertising on your site.  With ad networks it can sometimes be hard to know whether one of them is serving a deceptive ad.  And there do seem to be either false positives, or issues were the deceptive ad is no longer displaying when submitting a reconsideration request.

Once you are sure the deceptive ads have been removed, you can go ahead and file a reconsideration request, which should be in your Google Search Console account under manual actions.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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