Over the past 24 hours, numerous website owners and SEO professionals have reported receiving unusual notifications from Google Search Console stating that a new owner has been added to their property. At the same time, we have received similar alerts across several Search Console accounts that we manage.
What Do We Know So Far?
SEO communities around the world are reporting a widespread wave of “New Owner” notifications. In some cases, the accounts mentioned in the notifications are unfamiliar to the property owners. However, there are also reports involving accounts that were already known and had previously held permissions or ownership of the property.
Search Engine Roundtable reported on the issue today after Barry Schwartz himself received several similar notifications. Additional reports have also appeared on Reddit, where SEO professionals and website owners describe receiving a large number of “New Owner” notifications, in some cases involving users who were already Owners of the properties.
As of the time of writing, Google has not published an official explanation for the phenomenon. One possibility is that the issue is related to a bug in the Search Console notification system.
However, the situation is not identical in every case. Some notifications include email addresses that are unfamiliar to the property owners, so at this stage it cannot be assumed that all of the notifications are simply the result of a bug.
What Should You Do?
If you received a New Owner notification and recognize the email address, it is recommended to check whether the user previously had permissions or ownership of the property.
If the email address is unfamiliar, it should be treated as an event that requires further investigation:
- Check in Search Console whether the email address actually appears as an Owner and what type of permission it has.
- Review the property’s ownership and permissions and determine whether the user previously had access.
- Check how ownership was verified, for example through the website, a verification file, or DNS.
- Check for any unauthorized changes to the website, server, hosting account, DNS, or services such as Cloudflare.
- Review the security of Google accounts that have access to the property, including unusual activity, connected devices, and two-step verification.
- If the same event appears across multiple websites, check whether they share a common factor, such as a management account, hosting provider, development provider, or shared infrastructure.
- Do not simply remove an unfamiliar user before understanding how the ownership or permission was added, as this could leave a way for ownership to be verified again.
If an unfamiliar email address appears, it is recommended to involve a professional familiar with both Search Console and website infrastructure rather than assuming that the issue is simply a notification error.
At this stage, it is not recommended to automatically assume that the site has been compromised, but the notification should not be ignored either.
We will continue monitoring the reports and will provide an update if Google publishes an official statement or if additional information emerges regarding the source of the incident.
