Finding the Status of Your Badware Appeal to Google

Here's something that is easy to overlook.

Google's gives you a status when you ask
them to look at a site where you have
removed all the badware.

It reads like this:

Status of the last badware appeal
for this site: A review for this
site is still being processed.
Please check back later.

But where do you find this?

Here are the steps to finding the
status for your site:

1. Log into your Google account
2. Click Webmaster Tools
3. You should find yourself taken
   to the Webmaster Tools home
   page.
   
4. On the Webmaster Tools
   page, click on www.yoursite.com.
   I'm assuming you've already verified
   www.yoursite.com as belonging to
   you.
5. Look for This site may be
   distributing malware in red.
6. Also in red, you will see
   More Details.
7. Click on More Details.
8. Observe that several paragraphs
   of detail appear
9. Note that the first paragraph
   has the badware status message.

Here's that badware status message
again:

Status of the last badware appeal
for this site: A review for this
site is still being processed.
Please check back later.

Here's how the message will appear
once the badware status has become
a good status:

Status of the latest badware review
for this site: A review for this site
has finished. The site was found clean.
The badware warnings from web search
are being removed. Please note that
it can take some time for this change
to propagate.

All of the above is likely to change.
This post is current as of November
14, 2009.

Hope this helps.

Ed Abbott