How-to automatically discover your site has been hacked using Google Alerts

Having your site hacked is really common these days and it is growing all the time since it is so easy to do and the payoffs for unscrupulous webmasters can be big… especially when the hack is never discovered.

But how do you know if you’ve been hacked without following the web security industry constantly?  How about getting regular emails from Google Alerts?

My friend Patrick at BlogStorm covers a great way to be informed if your site falls prey to a hacker –

To get started we need to think of a few likely spam terms that people might like to inject in our site and then use them to make up a search query:

viagra OR cialis OR levitra OR Phentermine OR Xanax site:blogstorm.co.uk

Next simply go to Google Alerts and enter the query above into the “Create a Google Alert” box and you will get an email whenever Google spots one of your chosen spam words on your site.

The one thing he doesn’t call out that well is that you should make you list of ‘OR’ spam terms longer to catch more suspects, I’d suggest thinking dirty here and about loans, or you could check your email spam folder in for ideas as well.

This method certainly won’t discover all hacks, but it is a very easy way to find out about one of the more common site hacks automatically!