Google clamping down on enquiries?

Fake spyware message

[DerekH]

Anyone else seen this...
Instead of SERPS you get
"A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected."

Yes, I can understand the need for such, but it can be provoked with just a couple of keyclicks.

Type allinurl:yourfavouritesiteURL

You may only get two results - if so, click to see related results.

No surprises so far.

Now click to go to the second page of results
Can you get there? I can't! Used to be able to...
DerekH

[Brett_Tabke]

Doubtful. I know of one big backlink checking site that hits Google for 30k spiderings a day and they have never been banned.

[dmorison]

I've seen that warning several times in the last couple of weeks. I put it down to somebody playing silly beggers through one of NTL's transparent proxies, but then thinking about it they should be able to pick up your Google uber-cookie to idenfity individual users, so i'd be inclined to agree that they do have an over-zelous bot checking algo running at the moment!

adds: just looked at your location in profile - are you on NTL also? Perhaps it is our "network".... :o

[edited by: dmorison at 1:44 pm (utc) on Aug. 16, 2005]

[pmac]

>>> Anyone else seen this...

Been happening for a couple months now.

[Brett_Tabke]

sorry - my bad - I thought you meant you were banned in addition to the warning. Ya, as pmac said - it has been mentioned for a few months in the forums now.

[DerekH]

dmorison wrote

adds: just looked at your location in profile - are you on NTL also? Perhaps it is our "network".... :o

Wouldn't touch 'em with a bargepole - too many friends are wailing and gnashing their teeth about downtime.

No, I tried my queries on two different ISPs, one a public ISP and one on a corporate network.
All my queries failed, though by the time this thread appeared, both networks I tried can now issue the allinurl: command and move beyond the first page...
DerekH

[promis]

Google owes me USD 67.00 on this! I got so worried with that message that I purchased an anti-virus software only to find out my Mac was totally clean. After that I had to disable the anti as it slows down some software quite noticably. Glad to see it's not just me getting that mesage.

[dmorison]

aw promis that's not funny; I would definately write them - you never know.

[promis]

dmorison, I know it's not funny. I miss that money, but now that Google has gone public I guess they also have gone stingy and writing to them would just be a loss of time. Thanks for the thought though. Anyway I think they may be getting a commission from the anti guys since they actually suggest a link for buying the anti software. They may be having an affiliate relationship with them... and I am not being funny this time. Why provide a specific link anyhow? That's good business: Get people scared they've got a virus or spyware and link to an online anti-virus seller, then get the commission! It's a case one could win in court you know...

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I've started banning compromised (and SPAMmer spider) machines from my sites so as to save ~5% of my bandwidth and to stop them grabbing *more* copies of my email address (every SPAMmer worth their scraped pigs has had it since 1992 anyway)!

And Google's problem must be a lot bigger than mine, even in proportion to overall traffic!

Rgds

Damon

[softwareengineer99]

I experienced that message several times last week when going to the second page of [allinurl:keyword] searches, on a brand new machine. I then tried my searches from different networks and computers, but the same message was being displayed.

IMO, just another templated message from our fav company.