Chrome Adds "Suspicious Site" Warnings: What to Check

Google said on October 20, 2026 that Chrome will show a new "suspicious site" warning, milder than the red "dangerous site" page, and will use Gemini to spot scams and flag commands copied in ClickFix attacks. It applies to people browsing with Enhanced Protection and, indirectly, to every website that gets visitors from Chrome.

What we know

Who and when: Jasika Bawa, Group Product Manager for Chrome, announced it on Google's official blog on October 20, 2026.
Who gets it: all three changes are for users of Safe Browsing's Enhanced Protection, Chrome's strictest mode. Google says more than 1 billion users had it turned on in 2025.
Two warning levels: Google now separates "suspicious sites", a lower-confidence verdict with possible risk, from "dangerous sites", a high-confidence one. Suspicious warnings appear on pages with deceptive patterns that resemble known malicious sites, and they look different: other formatting, icons, color and text. Dangerous sites keep the full-page red warning. Google says this design lets it show more warnings.
Scam detection with Gemini: the AI scam detection that ran on-device last year has moved to a server-side Gemini model that will reach every Enhanced Protection user and cover fake antivirus and fake browser update scams. Google says page text is only analyzed when there are strong scam signals, isn't stored and isn't used to train models.
ClickFix: Google describes it as a technique that tricks users into copying and running malicious commands themselves. Chrome now detects when someone copies a suspicious command, strips personal data, sends it to Safe Browsing and shows a warning if the verdict is dangerous. Google says it's built to be highly precise so it doesn't get in developers' way.
What it doesn't say: the post gives no per-country dates, no platforms, and doesn't say whether users can click through a "suspicious site" warning. It has nothing for site owners either.

What changes and what doesn't

Nothing changes for people on Chrome's standard protection. The red "dangerous site" page stays the same. What's new is a middle step: Google can now warn with less certainty than before and, in its own words, show more warnings. For a website that cuts both ways. If the site has been compromised, visitors will find out sooner. If the site is clean but something on it looks like a scam, it could get a "suspicious" warning, and the post doesn't explain how the owner would find out or appeal.

How to tell if it affects you

Check the Security issues report in Search Console. It lists hacked content, malware and social engineering that have already triggered Google warnings for your site.
Look up your domain in the Safe Browsing site status tool in Google's Transparency Report (transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search).
Look for what triggers these warnings. Compromised sites often carry fake "I'm not a robot" checks that ask visitors to copy and paste something, fake antivirus or browser update alerts, and scripts nobody on your team added to the theme, plugins or footer.
Close the way in. Update your CMS, plugins and themes, remove admin users you don't recognize and change login passwords.
Test your site the way the most protected visitor sees it. In Chrome, turn on Enhanced Protection under Settings → Privacy and security → Security, then walk through your main pages and forms.
If your site tells people to copy commands (developer docs, tutorials), test it with that setting on too: Google says its ClickFix detection is highly precise, but it hasn't published how legitimate commands are handled.
If Google flagged your site and you've cleaned it up, request a review from the same Search Console report, explaining what happened and what you fixed. Google says reviews take from a few days to a few weeks.

Sources

Updates: if Google publishes rollout dates or a way for site owners to dispute a "suspicious site" warning, it will be added here with a link.