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Google Sends New Round of Outdated Plugin Warnings

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Google has been sending out a new round of Google Search Console warnings for site owners using outdated WordPress plugins.

Casey Markee posted a screenshot of the latest warning.

Revolution Slider was the reason why hundreds of thousands of WordPress blogs were exploited by hackers back in 2014.  And one of the problems was that this plugin came as part of a WordPress theme bundle, and so they weren’t installed individually for site owners to update the plugins via the WordPress plugin dashboard.

Previously, Google has sent out update reminders to site owners using various plugins as well as outdated versions of WordPress and Joomla.  It isn’t known if this latest round is just for the Revolution Slider plugin but there are many plugins out there that are exploitable by hackers if they are not updated or removed.

It is also a reminder that site owners should always ensure their CMS as well as plugins are up-to-date.  There have been many issues of exploits with popular plugins including ones by Yoast, Shareaholic, WP Super Cache, and more.

This isn’t a manual action, however, if the site does get hacked, Google can flag the site in the search results as being hacked or unsafe, and can remove it until the problem is resolved.

Don’t forget that if you have been hacked with this plugin, simply updating the plugin will not remove the hacked content.  You will still need to remove the hacked content separately.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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