Phishing, installing viruses will lead to a search penalty

Published: January 18, 2019

Is phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware used a ranking factor by Google and other search engines? Yes, according to the following official statement:

“some examples of malicious behavior include: […] installing malware, trojans, spyware, ads or viruses on a user’s computer” source

Not only this tactic is strongly penalized by Google, but it’s illegal as well. In many cases, the websites are hacked to include bad content, without the owners knowing what’s happening.