For hours today every time I do a Google search it comes back with a “we’re sorry” message and makes me keep putting in a capcha. WTF? I know it’s not something on my PC because the same thing is occurring with searches conducted from OMB’s built in Google search.
Specifically the error reads:
We’re Sorry…
… but your query looks similar to to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.
Somebody there needs to get this sucker fixed!
I found a ton of links in Google to these specific error results, but they are all talking about using things like inurl: intitle: and other advanced searches. I’m not doing any of that! All I’m doing is using the actual Google sidebar to perform my searches, or using the normal search function on my blog which has been working perfectly for over a year.
- Discussion thread on Webmaster World
- Heres one out of a bunch of threads on Google Groups about the problem.
- MyDigitalLife reported the same issue.
- JayAre comments on automated requests and queries.
Is anyone else getting this crap?
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I have not experienced that, but here in Asia, proxy servers can also cause a few headaches. Major providers use these in certain areas.
I’m in Asia and I get bouts of this. Oddly, resubmitting the exact same search usually works. Then it craps out on the next one. Then nothing for months. Who knows?
Hmm, can’t replicate it here, but that sucks. I’ve gotten so used to Google it would almost hurt my brain to learn to type yahoo.com instead lol
Yea I’ve only heard of that happening if you’ve made too many requests to Google too fast. I was worried about it happening to me because I wanted to run a script that would check my ranking for certain keywords.
I was warned that what’s happened you could happen to me.
Is is possible you’ve been making more than a 1000 requests a day?
Oh that’s weird, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen that error message. Of course I don’t use too many advanced modifiers in my queries, and I’d probably be a little bit frustrated if I saw the same thing over and over. Haha time for some live search? Yeah probably not. Maybe good old Yahoo!
It’s only tangentially related, but I wrote a post awhile back on the search engine that I’ve been using for awhile. It uses Google for its search results, but I wrote how Winning With Blingo was incentive enough for me to use it.
Did a quick search and found one thread where the poster said “Such failures occur, since Google implemented a limit of an average rate of 1 request per 1.725 seconds per API key, rather than waiting for 50,000 requests in one day. This seems to apply also to the Google Map API keys, but I’m not sure regarding that, since I didn’t test it.”
No idea what that means but they went on to suggest that the answer was to disconnect their router for long enough to get a new IP address.
(Not sure if I was allowed to post the link, so decided not to)
It probably has something to do with biorythms. I’ve seen it when I was messing around trying to find pages way deep in the search results and I built a page that loaded 10 Google pages with 100 search results each. Within a second I was requesting 1000 results….so call me a virus, spy, evil robot or something.
I had that happen before when I was doing some keyword research…
Kim:)
I have also heard reports of this happening to lots of people a couple of weeks ago at work. It seems to have been fixed on my end, but I guess there are still some kinks being worked out.
You have a lot higher chance of this happening if lots of people are behind the same public IP… Like on a company internet connection..
Kim:)
Never happened to me.But i can understand how frustrated can one get if one keeps getting the same message all day long.
The google search box doesn’t work for me on the site here for some reason w/ FF. I’ve tried it a few times the last few weeks, but it just comes up with a blank page for results. Works fine in IE, though.
I have seen this captcha many times too and i got frustrated too. But few days back i have noticed a new feature which i blogged here: http://www.nutskulls.com/2008/03/06/google-search-added-new-feature/ this is another feature which is related to search thats why i think i should share with all of you.
I get it all the time and then the Captcha thing it really irritates me. Just want to do a quick search and suddenly I know got to type the code (which I often get wrong).
I think is has to do with some of the guys in our office that query Google search engine looking for the number of pages indexed on competitors sites.
I am sure Google would like their surfers experience to be as best as possible, so they must be doing it for their own protection.