If you tried doing a search this morning on Google you would have found a huge problem! A little after 6:30 a.m. PST on January 31, 2008, all non paid Google search results and image search results (for US, Canada, UK, and a host of other countries) started to show the message This site may harm your computer. The message is flagged with the title, URL and description of the web page. Clicking on the title would bring you to a page telling you Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer!
Proof is some pictures attached in the post!
This morning, while researching on google search engine. I just noticed that every search results by Google now will have been labeled “This site may harm your computer”. Every and each site listed in Google search results now have been labeled that, even Mircrosoft.com, Google.com, Yahoo.com has been labeled too.. What has happened???
Even google themselves are marked with “This site may harm your computer”!
This happend for minutes only. Nytimes talk “Search Service on Google Briefly Fails”.
“Google’s Internet search service malfunctioned for nearly 55 minutes Saturday morning, upending users around the world with search results that carried false safety warnings and Web links that did not work.” posted on NYtimes.
“The company acknowledged Saturday that all searches produced links with the same warning message: “This site may harm your computer.” Clicking on any of the links led to an error message stating that the desired site could not be reached.” posted on NYtimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/technology/01google.html
From BBC NEWS:
“Google’s search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results.”
“Users who clicked on their preferred search result were advised to pick another one.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7862840.stm
To further explain the results of this fall down of search.
From digitalpoint forums..
Carlx says:
“this is ridonculous!Really bad mistake to make, how much money are they costing the global economy by stopping people finding things via their search?!
It’s like the police closing a major road in any country, its going to impact heavily on the economy untill it is reopened”
bille says:
“Oh boy. Somebody is going to get sacked for this.The interstitial page won’t even let you click through to sites.
Traffic dropped off 90% for my site, so I imagine the same for any site that’s mostly organic search traffic driven.”
gachet01 says:
“german too….oh oh…they loose millions every minute cause no site get traffic anymore..”
ketan9 says:
“… This is just ridiculous, all the traffic coming to site from google has dropped to dead zero!!!!”
DerkThunder says:
“OMG! I am so relieved to find out its not just my site. I just noticed 10 mins ago but though it was only for me. I get 90% of my traffic from google so my livelihood depends on not doing anything to label my sites as malware.”
Seleno says:
“this appear on all search result, and they should solve it in some hours if they didn’t do for 1 day or some days…then we will lose much traffic and money!!”
jkadin says:
“..many thousands of dollars or millions have been lost because of it…. “
JCWebmaster says:
“I was freaking out because I thought something was wrong with my site, then I thought my computer had a virus causing my browser to be screwed up, I was running virus scan, adware, then I remembered “oh wait, lets check digital point”, then was relieved to see it was not my computer!”
Google Company Explained!
“What happened? Very simply, human error,” Google explained in its blog.
Found on http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience on the Official Google Blog.
Google attributed the fault to human error made by “/” and said most users were affected for about 40 minutes.
“Google said that it periodically updated its list of sites suspected of carrying software that could harm computers, and that Saturday morning a Google employee mistyped a Web address for one such site, causing all sites to be flagged harmful.
There was some momentary tension when Google seemed to imply that the glitch had been caused in part by StopBadware.org, the company that helps Google determine which sites are unsafe. Google later posted a statement that took full blame for the error and apologized to users.” posted on NYtimes!
The problem now appears to be fixed.
What is the good thing about google response to this problem?
The company responded to this quickly!
Google has now posted an explanation, apologizing and taking responsibility for the “human error” that led to the problem.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html
The issue is also explained on StopBadware.org’s blog [stopbadware.org]
http://blog.stopbadware.org/2009/01/31/google-glitch-causes-confusion.
Well, everything is ok now. The hottest news is over!
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