Patrick Chapman explained on the Webmaster Central Blog, "We will be leaving messages for owners of potentially vulnerable sites in the Google Message Center that we provide as a free service as part of Webmaster Tools."  An old version of WordPress will get singled out in a first test involving five or six thousand webmasters.

 

Here’s the really interesting part, though: "If you manage a website but haven’t signed up for Webmaster Tools, don’t worry.  The messages will be saved and if you sign up later on, you’ll still be able to access any messages that Google has left for your site."

So we wind up with unsolicited advice that’s stuck in a time capsule.  This seems a little Big Brother-ish of Google, but it’s hard to argue with something that improves sites’ security.  As most experts will agree, security tends to become more of a problem with every passing month.

Check the Google Message Center as often as is convenient, then, and perhaps save yourself an odd encounter by inspecting your taillights, too.

Webmasters wanted clearer, timelier communication from Google, especially if there were problems with their sites that endangered their position in Google’s rankings. Many webmasters expressed frustrations when their websites dropped out of the SERPs, sometimes with no idea why it happened.

Maile Ohye said on the Google Webmaster Central blog the first messages distributed through the new Message Center will focus on quality issues. Over time, they will expand the types of messages communicated over this channel.

Google has started a small rollout of Message Center, with the intent of expanding it over time. All the languages supported now by Webmaster Central will have similar support in Message Center.