Malware notification

I signed in to google webmaster tools recently and saw this message

"We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com"

it appeared that my site was linking to another site which had some kind of malware. This other site has fixed its issues with the malware and therefor I requested google to review my site.

However, I have also noticed a significant drop in google rankings for my site, which I believe is a cause of this malware?

Have any of you encountered malware issues and did it have any negative effect on your rankings? Also, how long time will one have to wait for google to make a review? I read 2-3 months of googles site, which is a pretty long time... =/

 

My one client site got this issue in past when he used a free wordpress theme.

Solution:
1. Find the pages that are showing this warning. Or check whether its showing for the whole website. Normally Google shows this warning for every page of your website in SERPS

2. Google sent you a couple of tools & links to check for malicious code on your website too. Make sure that the Malware is not on your website. Make double check. Search for online tools for scanning your website.

3. Once done, 301 redirect the old pages which are showing error to the new pages and put the content of old pages on new pages.

4. Check from google tool about your website status

And yes it do effect ranking but when the malicious code is gone, then the ranking normally comes back when google recache or recrawl your pages.

 

it takes less than 24 hours to fix the issue. find where the malicious code is. usually they are on the index file, header file or htaccess file. however, it can be on any or all content files of your site depending on how your site was hacked.

clean up the site and make sure you remove all malware or code injection.

once the site is clean, go under webmaster tool, health/malware and you will see an option of submitting your site for a review. you do not have to write anything in the white box but you can say you cleaned the site etc if you wish.

once google gets the review request, they review the site and if the site is clean, the warning is removed.

it is an automated review and done in less than a day once you submit the request.

regarding ranking issue, if the site is down for long time, then yes it will cause ranking to drop. but if it is only a day or two or even few days, your ranking will not go down.