Google Search Console alert: Harmful content - Uncommon Downloads

After the review, the problem is disappear/fixed. I raised a "review request" stating:

The malicious content report doesn't contain any specific link affected by malicious content and I believe, after thorough checking of my website and my server, that my website is safe and secure for the users.

After 3 days, I received the review successful email from google stating:

Google has received and processed your security review request. Google systems indicate that [name-of-my-website] no longer contains links to harmful sites or downloads. The warnings visible to users are being removed from your site. This may take a few hours to happen.

Looks like it was indeed a false alarm and I believe it is most likely triggered because of advertising links. Google seems check the website when i start a campaign on their own systems like "AdWords". This check can report false positive if founds some uncommon/unknown binary file like *.exe.

This policy is a bit questionable, because can kill little developers/software company that provide software for the niches.


My suggestion is that you install an ssl certificate on your website - though you blocked off your domain name, I noticed that you are using http://____, which in and of itself can trigger Google Chrome to give users a warning when visiting your site. Now considering that you are providing a software download, this will undoubtedly add more risk for your users who are downloading software from your site.

If you install an SSL cert (which is a known ranking factor & will enhance your visibility) as well as try hosting your software with a third party (such as github), I believe that this would be enough to resolve your issue.