If your WordPress website is infected by the malware which can be virus, worms, adware and spyware then Google Search Console will warn you and your visitors with the message “This site ahead contains harmful programs” while accessing your website. The malware that was injected in your website can manipulate or steal the visitors information while browsing your WordPress website.
In this tutorial you will learn how to fix the site ahead contains harmful programs error in WordPress within a minutes.
You may see one of the warning message below when your website is infected by the malware and blacklisted in Google.
- This Site Ahead Contains Harmful Programs.
- This Site has been Marked as a Phishing Site.
- Deceptive Site Ahead.
- The Site Ahead Contains Malware.
The example image below is one of the warning message that you will see when your website contents malware.
Cause of the Error
The main cause of this error is the malware that is injected in your blog by the hackers or yourself while adding malware code without knowledge. Your WordPress blog can also be infected while installing faulty plugins that contents malware code.
Typically, if you are implementing low quality ads from untrusted Ads Network adding script or line of code to display advertisement in your blog which may content malware as a result your website will be blacklisting by the Google.
Fix Site Ahead Contains Harmful Programs error in WordPress Blog
This error can be fix by cleaning malware from your WordPress website. You can use plugins such as Wordfence or Sucuri that will help you to find and clean the malware from your blog.
Step by Step Process to Clean Malware from your Blog.
- Scan your Website.
- Clean Malware from your Website.
- Remove Infected Advertisement.
- Submit Request to Review your Website.
Step-1: Scan your Website
For quick scan use this free Sucuri site check tool that will show you the malware infected files in your blog. Enter your blog address in the box and click on scan website.
Sucuri site scan will take few minutes depending on the size of your blog. Once scan completes you will see the report where you will find malware scripts injected in your WordPress blog.
Sucuri is one of the best website security provider that will protect your blog from any kind of attacks such as traffic flood, SQL injection, DDoS attacks and many more. Sucuri site scan is free but rest of the other services comes with the paid plan which you may need in future to protect your blog from attacks.
Now, you know your Website is infected by the malware. You can use another free plugins called wordfence to clean the malware from your WordPress blog.
Step-2: Clean Malware from your Website
You can clean malware using free wordfence security plugins in your WordPress blog.
Login to your WordPress dashboard. Click on plugins then add new. In the search box at the right type wordfence you will see the wordfence security plugin at the beginning. Click on install now button then activate it.
Once activated you will see Wordfence option in your WordPress panel. You can scan your blog and clean the malware in one click. Click on wordfence from the WordPress panel and click on scan.
From the wordfence dashboard click on start new scan button. It will start scanning your blog which will take few minutes to complete. Once completed you will see report in wordfence dashboard.
Now, you can start cleaning malware infected files. Click on Repair all repairable files button at the top right. Wordfence will start cleaning the infected files removing all the injected scripts from your blog.
Step-3: Remove Infected Advertisement
This step is only for the bloggers who are not using trusted ad networks such as Google Adsense. If your blog display low quality advertisement from different ad networks then ads may content malicious code which need to be removed before submitting request to review your infected blog.
Remove all the display advertisement from the header, body, footer and widgets. Once removed you can request to review your blog following step 4 below.
Step-4: Submit Request to Review your Website
If you have completed all the above process to clean the malware from your blog then you can submit request to review your blog using Google webmaster tools.
If you have not added your website to google webmaster tools then check this guide on how to add website to google webmaster tools.
From the Google webmaster tools dashboard click on security issues where you will see all the blog issues. Check the box and click on request a review.
If you didn’t find any submission options you can use the link below to submit the request.
You can also use this link to submit the request to review your blog. Enter your affected blog address in URL field then check the CAPTCHA box and click on submit report.
We hope this guide on how to Fix the Site Ahead Contains Harmful Programs Error in WordPress is helpful. If you find this guide helpful, please share and follow us on facebook and twitter.
