: Google bot hits on files 'apple-app-site-association' and 'assetlinks.json' showing up in Google Webmasters as pages with errors I've seen a number of posts on this but none really answer the

@Frith620

You are not being hacked. Google Bot is trying to see if you have those files using Digital Assets Links protocol to check whether your website has any association with an App.

You can read more about these files here developers.google.com/digital-asset-links/v1/getting-started

Vote Up Vote Down

@Berumen354

The file which is being requested is a json file used by some websites to map certain sections of the site and certain pages to a native app so that going into those sections or pages will automatically open the native app and use the app instead of the browser for iOS devices. It appears as though Google is trying to see if you have this file on your site so that they can include the association between sections of your site and native iOS apps in the index. This does not mean that your site has been hacked and does not indicate any problems. You can safely ignore this as Googlebot will check for the file and when it sees that the file does not exist will continue on without an issue as if it hadn't checked for the file, the only reason why it is shown in webmaster tools is for transparency so that webmasters know that Google has tried to access the file when it doesn't exist.

Vote Up Vote Down