Nate Covington

Apple and Google are both rolling out significant updates to their respective "Map" apps.  Here is a quick recap:

Question:
Our site has been up and running with out any problems since for years! Do I really need to patch my Wordpress (Joomla, Drupal) site?

Answer:
I agree! For over 10 years, many people have been getting away without patching their websites, they've been lucky!

Todays' article includes a screenshot of a typical Wordpress site. This person hired someone else to build their Wordpress site, and it was never patched. Their site was built in 2017 and hacked in 2018 & 2019...

Three scary aspects of having your business listing "Suspended" by Google, after personally going through the experience with my wife's house cleaning business:

1. Google will not notify you when your listing gets suspended,
2. Google will not tell you why it was suspended, and
3. Google won't coach you through getting it un-suspended.

You can sign in to your GMB account and submit an "appeal" to have it reviewed by someone at Google (presumably a human being), but that doesn't guarantee anything. If they review your listing and it is still in violation of Google's terms of service, you'll find yourself sitting around for days (weeks?) wondering if your business listing will ever come back online.  The reason that Google won't "coach" you through changing your listing to bring it into compliance is they don't want to directly educate people on how to game the system.

The new tool temporarily block URLs from showing in Google, it shows outdated content and content filtered by SafeSearch.

Google has launched a new removals tool within Google Search Console. This tool does three things (1) lets you temporarily hide URLs from showing in Google search, (2) show you which content is not in Google because it is “outdated content” and (3) shows you which of your URLs were filtered by Google’s SafeSearch adult filter.

Scam Alert!  I just received this earlier this morning from a company who tried to trick me into renewing my domain registration with them and paying extra for search engine registration - two separate items that aren't typically combined:

Subject: Domain Notification for (redacted).com : This is your Final Notice of Domain Listing
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 07:43:56 -0800
From: (redacted).com Support <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
To: (redacted)

A few clients have asked about whether they should use the backup system provided by their hosting company to backup their websites.

Specifically they were asking about InMotion Hosting’s new Backup Manager that is rolling out across their servers.  

I'm torn on this. Part of me is saying that you can't have too many backups.

System Preferences -> Software Update -> Advanced -> Uncheck -> "Automatically: Check for Updates"

Related:
Google Is Rolling Out Quote Request Buttons on GMB for Branded Searches

1.  Sign into your Google My Business management area here and confirm your Google account is properly managing the business on Google Maps:

https://www.google.com/business/

2.  Install the Google My Business app one your smart phone.

Out of the box, Drupal can email you notifications whenever there are security patches available.  These are some common questions that I receive from my clients about installing these patches: 

Should I go ahead and click update?

If the security updates are for Drupal "Modules" then yes, you can install the updates right through the Drupal admin panel.  For updating the Drupal Core software, this needs to be done at the server-level (hosting account). 

Since Google has phased out old recaptcha (v1), some of our clients reported that their old Joomla 1.5 installs are suffering - getting spammed, now that they no longer have a decent captcha available.  While we realize that Joomla 1.5 sites should be upgraded to the latest version, not all clients are willing, or able to afford this.