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I often see threads in the various discussion forums online with people complaining that the Google search results look weird. They often complain the wrong sites come up, or they are full of ads or there are weird pop ups. The answer to these issues is often that their computers have been infected with some form of virus and/or malware.
Google has a specific FAQ page just to help people with this issue. You can find the page under the title Suspicious results and strange behavior: Strange pop-ups and other malware. If you have a similar issue, make sure to check out that page asap and take the necessary action to cleanse your computer.
As Google becomes more popular and less savvy searchers use computers and Google, more and more people get hit by these viruses. I believe this weekend had one of the higher levels of reports in the various forums, with complaints of this nature. Unsuspecting searchers, complaining that Google failed them, when in reality, their security software has failed them.
I'll share just a few of the many threads I spotted on this topic. Here are one, two, three and four threads, with different issues, but all seem to be due to malware issues.
Comments:
No Name
10/26/2009 04:48 pm
I just ran across the website, and it seems like a good deal, but I went to do my due diligence before buying, and I couldn't find too many reliable forums on whether it is worth it or not. It is supposed to be the best selling ebook ever, but I don't know anyone who's bought it. It's not that expensive and he does offer a money-back guarantee if you don't like it, but I just want to be sure before buying! I also found this review: http://thetruthaboutsixpackabs2.com but I am not sure if this is true!
Daniel Brandt
10/27/2009 05:55 pm
I wouldn't be so quick to blame weird Google results on malware lurking in the browser. Look at this screen shot: http://www.google-watch.org/gifs/goobug2.gif There were 643 links like this offered up by Google if you clicked to repeat the search with the omitted results included. There were no legitimate links at all. It's not malware in my browser. The same results came up using Scroogle.org, which is a proxy scraper between my browser and Google.
droid1659
08/20/2011 01:35 am
Google is quite useful for us....
teetec8
08/25/2011 02:43 am
Hackers can promote their malicious websites via blackhat SEO techniques.