I spotted a thread at the Google Webmaster Help forums where a webmaster was a bit skeptical about getting an email from Google offering one-on-one help to fix his hacked site. So he posted it in the forums and Google's Eric Kuan said it is legit and it was him who sent the email.
Google is sending some webmasters direct emails asking them if they need help fixing their hacked sites so that they can rank well again in the search results and more importantly, it won't harm their web site visitors.
Here is a copy of the email the webmaster received:
Subject: Would you like to talk to Google about your hacked site?Hi, This is Eric from Google, and I work on helping webmasters. The Google webspam team recently discovered that your website was hacked. I know that cleaning up a hacked site can be difficult, so I’m reaching out to see if there is anything I can do to help you with your clean-up efforts. Feel free to let me know what you’ve done so far and anything you might need help with. Sincerely,
Eric Webmaster Relations Specialist
I would be skeptical as well, because it is not every day you get an email from the Google spam team offering one-on-one help. In fact, Google's spam team simply never does this but I guess Google is experimenting with it.
Eric responded in the thread:
This email was sent by me. I've been sending emails to people whose site has been compromised to give them more guidance about how to fix their site and understand how we can improve how we help webmasters. Feel free to respond directly to that email to contact me. If you're more comfortable in the forums, I along with the other superb contributors in the help forums can help you work through any problems you might have on your site in here.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
