Archive | April 29, 2007

links for 2007-04-30

Google says I have a virus or spyware

Today I was trying some advanced google queries to see if the recent changes to this blog had made their way into the google search results. Some of the queries involved advanced search operators, as described in this url. Simple stuff really, a few inurl: mixed with a few keywords, coupled with 100 results (the maximum available from google at a time). Lo and behold, I was presented with the following error message:


G
oogle
 Error  

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar 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.

Granted, the queries I was performing were probably pretty rare, and perhaps a tiny bit more cpu intensive on their servers, compared to regular queries. But I never expected to be given a download link for an antivirus. I am running Firefox, have current anti virus and regularly scan my system for viruses. Not to mention that the few queries I was doing were manual and not some bot doing repetitive queries. I am curious if anyone else has come across such error messages from Google.

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One thing Live.com Search has that Google doesnt

Ever want to know what website was on a certain ip address or websites (in the case of shared hosting)?

The following search operator is very useful as it returns websites running on the same ip address.

This is definately one feature provided my Microsoft Live Search that Google does not provide.

It is simply ip:123.32.123.123 where 123.32.123.123 is the ip where you want to find other websites being hosted.

Here is a query (ip:4.79.226.104) run on the ip address for www.howstuffworks.com, you can see over 1000 other sites on the same ip address.

More servicesGoogle