Google’s John Mueller answered a question in the SEO Office-hours hangout about whether a security vulnerability had any effect on SEO. He said technically it’s not an SEO issue. But that a vulnerability had the seeds of becoming an SEO issue in the future.
When Does Something Become an SEO Issue?
In a way this is a somewhat philosophical question. Someone I know who does a lot of site audits was surprised to hear that I included a security screening as part of all SEO audits.
The reason I did it is because a vulnerability can become an SEO problem if the site gets hacked and Google blocks it from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Advertisement
Continue Reading Below
In my opinion, just because the effect on SEO is in the future doesn’t mean that it’s not an SEO issue. Why wait for a vulnerability to become an SEO issue before addressing it to fix the SEO?
If it has the potential to become an SEO issue in the future, much like cloaking or paid links, then in my opinion it’s an SEO issue.
But that’s just my opinion.
Here is the question: