How to prevent your Google site from being mistaken for a phishing site and how to report phishing on Google sites

Globally, there are almost 1 million Google Sites. They are widely used due to their ease of use, integration with Google services, security and Google search friendliness. Many corporations use google sites internally or publicly as an intranet and some governments built entire websites on Google sites. 

As Google sites is a native platform with reliable name authority and easy to use, some bad actors use them for phishing.

A number of news articles report that scammers create websites with Google sites to lure phishing sites. 

This type of site can be found in Google Sites. This is a typical phishing website.

Because of this, some social media platforms miscategorize sites.google.com as phishing sites and mistakenly label you as a scammer.

To prevent this, there is a very simple solution. You can add a custom domain to your sites.google.com account

How to prevent Google Sites from being treated as phishing

Unless you're building google sites exclusively for your personal use or as a collaboration site within your business, you would want a domain to host your google sites.

You can buy a domain name for as low as $12 per year from places like Google Domains.

By connecting your domain to your Google Sites URL starting at sites.google.com, your visitors will be redirected to your business domain instead of the Google Sites url when entering your domain.

By doing this, you can avoid being miscategorized as a scammer and build trust in your brand.

For more information on adding a custom domain to your Google Sites URL, see our blog article: Your Ultimate Guide to Setting Up a Custom Domain on Google Sites

How to report phishing Google Sites

The good news is that if you happen to come across a phishing site built using Google Sites, you can directly report it to Google, so that bad actors such as these have no place to hide.

In order to report, there are two options. 

First option - Scroll down Google Sites and find the (!) circle on the left side. Click 'Report abuse' to report the scam site. To complete the report, you must choose one of the categories 'Spam, malware, or phishing'.

There is also the option to report phishing attacks through Google's official website "Prevent & report phishing attacks" page.

NEW: Google has recently launched a page designed for reporting "spammy, deceptive, or low-quality webpages." within Google Search Console.

Need help?

For professional pages on Google Sites or for any other issues, you can contact us directly or post your question on our Facebook page.