5 ms·
For quite some time now (many months, maybe a year or two) I've noticed that when searching for something rather obscure, when there aren't many relevant result
by 20after4 5y ago
For quite some time now (many months, maybe a year or two) I've noticed that when searching for something rather obscure, when there aren't many relevant results, google search nonetheless returns pages full of sort-of relevant looking results which all redirect to some form of spam or malware site. The malicious results are always ranked below any legit results but they are almost always there at the end of page one. For sufficiently obscure search then the crap can fill even the majority of the first page.
The commonality is that they seem to keyword stuff obscure keywords and even phrases (possibly by randomly brute forcing or re-combining text fragments into synthesized sentences.) and they all redirect one or more times, prevent the back button from working and land on some kind of suspicious page that is almost certainly hosting some kind of malware. The only way out is to close the tab and start over. I'd imagine things would be much worse without ublock installed.
- rambojazz 5y agoI've noticed this issue for years. And that is the reason why I never go past page 2.
- alexpetralia 5y agoI used to notice this so much I had initially thought my browser got hacked.
- Brave-Steak 5y ago
- jkaptur 5y agoAre you able to provide an example query?
- 20after4 5y agoUnfortunately no, I haven't kept notes when it happened.
- ghughes 5y agoI've been noticing something similar happening with GitHub issue threads. Spam sites like githubmemory.com are frequently ranking higher than GitHub itself, and sometimes GitHub doesn't even show up at all, even with a specific search term that appears in an issue thread for a popular repo. The cynic in me can see good reasons for both Google and Microsoft to be okay with this.
- prox 5y agoI have been DuckDuckGo 100% completely the last month and from these messages I am super happy I did. Google is tanking fast. Even a general public of r/askreddit noticed, with a huge thread and similar experiences. If I was Google, I would be very worried, and if I was DDG I would be pulling out all stops with advertising.
- easrng 5y agoDuckDuckGo has lots of ads actually, even on the radio (!) which is pretty interesting.
- herbst 5y agoI wasn't even aware how many sites mirror GitHub until Google stopped finding GitHub for me at all. If I don't add 'GitHub' it likely won't show up, and if I do there is no guarantee either.
- willis936 5y agoAt least once a week I stupidly click on a malware site from search results. Luckily it's always on a work laptop that has AV that prevents the page from loading. This never happened in my life until the past two months. Some many things are very wrong right now.
- easrng 5y agouBlock Origin will block most of the redirect/traffic selling pages and put up a big warning screen.
- jojohohanon 5y agoI’ve not noticed malware so much, but several legit independent programming resources (baledung, as a random example of a possible target; not sure I’ve seen their content stolen) will have their content lifted wholesale, slightly cropped to remove identifying marks, and then rehosted, stuffed to the gills with ads. These initially seem fine, and it’s only when you repeatedly search the same topic that you notice the stolen content. You can tell the legit site by having bylines, references, and fewer ads. Google seems to weight them the same, which is near malicious: it has the history to show primacy.
- danuker 5y agoCould it be that more ads on the pirate sites mean more Google revenue?
- convolutionart 5y agoSeems a similar attack may occur with scam calls. User looks up number. Search leads to malicious page. It has now linked phone and pc details.
- 20after4 5y agoHoly crap that's devious. Never occurred to me. Do you have any reference to this or is it just a hypothesis? Seems scarily plausible to me.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoI've seen that behaviour for years. Even with quotes which used to show exact verbatim matches only, you'll still get pages of garbage results.
- cendyne 5y agoThis happens to me when I research some RFC concepts surrounding oauth, saml, and the like. It’s incredibly frustrating.
- neurostimulant 5y ago> The only way out is to close the tab and start over. You can press and hold the back button to reveal a list of previous urls. Useful to evade forced redirect like this because you can "jump" directly to the last google search url.
- 20after4 5y agoThese sites somehow defeat the history list entirely. The history for the tab just disappears.
- emptyparadise 5y agoI've been going insane since I couldn't find anybody talking about this (just tons and tons of SEO blogs) but yes.