This is apparently not new at all… But recently received an email from Google telling me to upgrade an old clients WordPress installation. This email, apparently intended to be a friendly reminder to help webmasters get off of their butts and upgrade their software makes me a bit curious. Does Google monitor software versions it can discover for the sake of additional malware probabilities requiring a manual review or more close watch? Search quality with regard to rank, maintenance and general is anybody home in there questions?

Seems to me that Google is not likely to be just sending a friendly reminder here… Most likely there is a master purpose (certainly for the greater good of mankind) and the reminder is a bonus service. So this benevolent service is in fact helpful to most, but clearly it means Google’s watching.

For the record, this is an old, stubborn client that wouldn’t upgrade their website unless sales completely stopped…. and then they might even use PPC to get by.

See the friendly email from Google Search Quality Team below… and yes, upon full email trace it is in fact from Google.