Can You Report a Bad Website to Google?

The World Wide Web is a place full of options you can choose from, and by options we mean websites. You can go on your favorite food blog, sign into your social media account, read books online, shop on your favorite e-commerce platform, etc. The Internet is, therefore, an almost never-ending source of content for all kinds of interests that can make everyone happy.

But some types of content found on some websites don’t exactly feel right to most people. On the Internet, all kinds of people come together, including not-so-okay kinds of people that are up to no good. There are websites that showcase and condone toxic, offensive or plain dangerous content out there, at least until they get reported.

How many times did you find yourself on a website that just didn’t look or feel okay? For example, a website that appears to be innocent and child-friendly, but, in reality, is much darker than it looks at first glance. If you came across a website that could make children feel unsafe or even get them hurt, you would think to yourself “I really hope this site gets taken down as soon as possible, this is creepy”. Or maybe, you could run into scam websites that love to rip off gullible people.

Unfortunately, taking down every bad website in existence is not possible, because they’ll keep on popping up like mushrooms an infinite amount of times. But you can still do what you can to stop their fishy behaviors by reporting these websites and their content whenever you come across them. So, in this article, we’re going to find out how to report a bad website to Google.

What kind of behavior can you report to Google?

You can report any type of content that you consider to be a violation of Google’s Terms of Service or program policies. All you need to do is clicking on Report abuse at the bottom of the page, when it comes to Google Sites. But keep in mind that Google can decide not to take action against a website or platform – by, for example, removing the offensive content – if it doesn’t violate any policy. Content that you disagree with or deem inappropriate and offensive is not always a violation, therefore, it might not get removed.

Now, let’s talk about the cases in which reporting a website is possible. The violations on the site must be of this nature:

– spam, malware, and phishing

– violence

– hate speech

– terrorist content

– harassment, bullying, and threats

– sexually explicit material

– child exploitation

– impersonation

– personal and confidential information

– illegal activities

– public streaming

– copyright infringement

– content use and submission

Actions Google may take on abusive material

Once Google made sure that the website at issue committed one of the aforementioned offences, action will be taken against the incriminated content. This is what could happen:

– deletion of the file from the account

– restrictions put on sharing a file

– file availability is limited to certain people

– disabled access to one or more Google products

– deletion of the Google Account

– illegal materials get reported to appropriate law enforcement authorities