How to prevent your Google site from being mistaken for a phishing site and how to report phishing on Google sites

Globally, there are almost 1 million Google Sites. They are widely used due to their ease of use, integration with Google services, security and Google search friendliness. Many corporations use google sites internally or publicly as an intranet and some governments built entire websites on Google sites.

As Google sites is a native platform with reliable name authority and easy to use, some bad actors use them for phishing.

A number of news articles report that scammers create websites with Google sites to lure phishing sites.

This type of site can be found in Google Sites. This is a typical phishing website.

Because of this, some social media platforms miscategorize sites.google.com as phishing sites and mistakenly label you as a scammer.

To prevent this, there is a very simple solution. You can add a custom domain to your sites.google.com account

How to prevent Google Sites from being treated as phishing

Unless you're building google sites exclusively for your personal use or as a collaboration site within your business, you would want a domain to host your google sites.

You can buy a domain name for as low as $12 per year from places like Google Domains.

By connecting your domain to your Google Sites URL starting at sites.google.com, your visitors will be redirected to your business domain instead of the Google Sites url when entering your domain.

By doing this, you can avoid being miscategorized as a scammer and build trust in your brand.

For more information on adding a custom domain to your Google Sites URL, see our blog article: Your Ultimate Guide to Setting Up a Custom Domain on Google Sites

How to report phishing Google Sites

The good news is that if you happen to come across a phishing site built using Google Sites, you can directly report it to Google, so that bad actors such as these have no place to hide.

In order to report, there are two options.

First option - Scroll down Google Sites and find the (!) circle on the left side. Click 'Report abuse' to report the scam site. To complete the report, you must choose one of the categories 'Spam, malware, or phishing'.

There is also the option to report phishing attacks through Google's official website "Prevent & report phishing attacks" page.

However, If you are using Google Sites, you don't even need to submit XML since your Google Sites is already being indexed with built-in Google Search Optimization.

#3. Optimize Page Speed & Get Rid of Bloat

Page speed is essential for performance, and Google will be the first to tell you. They also have tools to help you test your page speed and find areas that need improvement. Make sure you upload your images, put them in the most miniature format possible, and remove any extras you don't need. Skip ads and pop-ups and make sure there are no distractions. These days, you will lose points if you have too many pop-ups.

Page speed is all about giving people quick and easy answers. Simplify navigation and take advantage of mobile design to create a powerful site that is mobile-friendly and easy to load on any platform. You can use Google Analytics tools or find many other tools to test your page speed and identify areas for improvement.

#4. Change Google Sites Permissions

The next step in SEO for Google Sites is to change the permission for the website to be published on the website. This allows people to search and open the site and gives Google crawlers access to the content. If you do not change this permission, your Google sites will not be indexed by Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engine.

To make your Google Site publicly available, click on the "Share with Others" icon at the top of the Site builder screen and then change the "Published Site" setting to make the website public. This setting change will allow your site to be crawled, indexed, and ranked in SERPs.

#5. Get a Complimentary Google Sites SEO Audit

Anyone with a Google account can create their website free with Google Sites. Although this CMS platform is simpler and more limited than many competitors, it welcomes users and achieves its purpose of allowing users to publish quickly and easily. Combining a CMS with a Google Sites SEO plan means increasing your site's chances of ranking well, increasing traffic, and using your stuff.

There are benefits to any website when it comes to using Google Analytics, but if you're on Google Sites, it's a must. Not only will it tell you how your site is doing in traffic and rankings, but it will also tell you where your SEO efforts are working, maybe missing a sign and more. You can create different customizable reports to help you learn more about your SEO campaigns and what can be customized or optimized.

Takeaway

These five SEO tips and best practices are crucial steps you can take to improve your website. You make changes that will help customers and searchers better understand your business. However, sometimes people recommend SEO methods that do not bring success to visitors to the website and are only there to try to manage searches.

As you can see, Google Sites SEO is the process of improving Google sites to help them rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant information. And like other popular CMS platforms like Wix and WordPress, some HTML elements on Google Sites can also be optimized for SEO to increase your search engine rankings.

Need help?

For professional pages on Google Sites or for any other issues, you can contact us directly or post your question on our Facebook page.