If your site was hacked, how would you tell? Interestingly, Google (News - Alert) may more likely be able to identify when your site has been hacked in certain situations. Over 20,000 sites received a hacked notification message today when Google detected suspicious behavior commonly associated with hacked sites. Since Google is able to monitor traffic coming from your site, they can tell when suspicious activity like spamming is emanating from your site before you even know it.

Matt Cutts, the head of the Google webspam team, today sent out a tweet that said that Google has detected “weird redirects” from certain sites, which is a common sign of a hack. Google is more likely able to detect such kinds of attacks since most website owners or webmasters rarely use Google to locate their website. They go directly to their site using by typing directly the website URL. Weird redirects that associate your website using certain keywords go unnoticed by some webmasters and may cause Google to bring down certain pages of your website thereby affecting your overall page rank.

Back in 2010, Google announced an upgrade to their then existing Webmaster Tools that would include a new software version that would help protect sites. The software notifies webmasters of potential issues that have been detected which includes spammy content, comment spam and suspected hacking. Of course to benefit from this service from Google, webmasters need to set up an account with Webmaster Tools to receive such and similar updates.

Today’s alert is just an example of the need for webmasters to regularly check their site functionality and subscribe to online tools like Webmaster Tools that don’t cost a dime but offer invaluable service to site owners. Apart from hacked notifications, Webmaster Tools offers other tools that can help improve the quality of your website such as keyword listings to show you how many people are visiting your site based on selected keywords.