Google error message is misleading, not about "virus or spyware" but instead about the search string and where entered
I was happily googling today when I suddenly got the following error:
Google We're sorry...
... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.
We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.
What mystified me was that I had been doing many google searches, and had coincidentally run both SpyBot S&D and AdAware just this week (and have NAV running) , so I was confident it was unlikely to really be caused by my computer. I noticed that the message asserted it could be another computer on my (home) network, but again I was suspicious of that.
Instead, I tried another search, and it was ok. Then I backed up to the search that failed, and got it again. That got me thinking: this isn't about my computer or network. It's about the search string. Some searching on the message found others observing the same thing. No one had quite the complete answer, but I did discover something very interesting.
My search was using the INURL: keyword (in google search criteria), and it turns out that some others were reporting issues with that. What's interesting, though, is I found that there's a big difference between whether I enter the criteria in the google search form (such as at google.com), or in the google toolbar, or at the top of another search result page. The first two work, while the last fails. Here's the difference in the URL's generated by Google for a given criteria ("inurl:newatlanta.com"):
When searching for from the front page form on google.com, there's no problem and the URL generated was:
Similalry, when searching from the google toolbar, that too was ok and generaged the same URL:
The problem only occurred when I was looking at a google search results page, such as if I tried the same search on one of those results page above (but it's not significant what the prior search was). In this case, it fails with the error and note that the generated URL is quite different:
So it seems to be a bug in Google, I'd say, since the same criteria entered the other two ways work.
Hmmm- I have the same error message when I use "translate this page"in
Google.. I am doing some research and spend some time checking out
foreign-language blogs & forums. Trouble is, I often don't speak the local
language, and so have taken to using "translate this page" when I Google
the forums... And sure enough, after about 10 page turnings in a trnslated
forum- boom! up pops the error and I am out of business on that page for
the day. Next day, I get another 10 pages...etc. It's painful, slows down
the productivity, and makes me think I need to find another search engine
that will translate for me.... If anyone has a clue as to how I can work
around this, I'd love to hear it. PauliC