Ads By Goooooogle

[SirAlleyCat]

I have seen way too many pages containing "Ads by Goooooogle" ( not Google ) lately, and it also seems that half my search engine results point to a generated page that contains my search topic, but then nothing but a list of ad links, by Goooooogle.

Is this some kind of new virus / adware that is not detected by Avast? Or is it some kind of popular alternative to pop-ups?

[RejZoR]

If you're using Firefox/Mozilla Suite browser yu can use my eXcessive AdBlock filter.
You can get it here: www.excessive-software.eu.tt

It can block nearly all Google Ads (with exception for GMail).

[FreewheelinFrank]

It does seem suspicious.

It is possible that your system has been hijacked by spyware. I suggest you do a thorough scan with the following anti-spyware scanners and see if they turn up anything.

(They are all free and all usually find something different, so it really is worth running all of them, but at least run Ad-Aware and Spybot S & D.)

Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoft.de/
Spybot Search & Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
Webroot Spy Sweeper: (Free working trial) http://www.download.com/Webroot-Spy-Sweeper/3000-8022_4-10373771.html
MS AntiSpyware: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en
Yahoo! Anti-Spy: http://toolbar.yahoo.com/
X-Cleaner Free: http://www.xblock.com/download-freeware.php

Edit: If not, Firefox Adblock is good as RejZoR said.

[polonus]

Hi SirAlleyCat,

If the recommendations of our FreewheelinFrank do not lead to results, and the hijacker page is of the C://res.. type you can also download AboutBuster by RubberDuck from here: http://www.malwarebytes.biz/ For this special malware AboutBuster has an excellent track record, for other things it is doing not much. If it is a BHO a browser helper object that troubles you, you could try BHO-Demon.

Greets,

polonus

[RejZoR]

Google ads on other pages are powered by Google Syndicate and are quiet common in these day. It can be also found on www.av-comparatives.org

[FreewheelinFrank]

Search pages do not usually contain

nothing but a list of ad links.

Either our beknighted side-street feline friend is exaggerating a bit, or possibly he has some sort of spyware which is hijacking Google search pages and injecting its own adverts. (And I have heard of spyware which injects adverts into web pages, although not of anything which alters Google pages in this way.)

Either way, I thought it would be sensible to rule out any spyware infection before suggesting any adblocking solution.

If SirAlleyCat is still unhappy about the number of Google ads, your Adblock list is an excellent idea. I use an Adblock list which doesn't block Google ads, and I only get two or three at the side of every page, which isn't particularly intrusive, which is why I thought there might be something suspicious going on.

Regards,

FF

[RejZoR]

Well some are impossible to block because they are part of current page.
If it's external link or iFrame you can remove it,but internal using JavaScrcript can be difficult (like GMail ads and some in google serach engine).
But these google ads aren't that intrusive. It's worse with flashing Flash or GIF banners which really make me go nuts. Thanks to AdBlock i no longer have to watch them
It's like browsing another alternate web

[DavidR]

For those that use forefox, you can use an extension called flashblock so they don't load unless you click the load/play button invaluable when you have dial-up.

And as RejZoR said AdBlock is great too.

[SirAlleyCat]

Thanks for the input guys. I did download and scan with the suggested programs, but I didn't find anything other than a few marginal cookies.

Here is a typical page I am getting. In this case, I put "Dish Network" in my MSN search engine.

http://www.1-dish-network.net/

Note how my search name is included in the URL. This is typical, but if you go to the page, you can see that it is mostly ad links on a page with little or no useful information on my search topic.

Perhaps it is just a clever way of hi-jacking the search engine instead of a virus, but I do find them annoying none the less.

SirAlleyCat

[FreewheelinFrank]

I think this is an instance of URL hijacking. Usually scammers register an URL which is similar to a company URL, especially as it might appear if mistyped or mispelled, so that of  the many millions of customers who log onto the site, a significant percentage end up at the scam site. The scammers then demand money to give up the scam URL. This, however, seems to be a search engine scam: registering a similar-sounding URL so that their site appears in a search result along side the legitimate company name.

I did the same search as you on MSN and got 3 sponsored ads at the top, five at the side, and the ad-scam link was number five.

In the same search with Google I got 7 sponsored links to the right of the page but the scam link did not appear, at least on pages 1-5.

Perhaps Google is a better option if you want to avoid these scam ads, and If the ads on Google are too intrusive, you could block them with RejZoR's block list.

Curiously, I only saw one ad link on the scam link page. How many do you see? I use Spybot S & D bad server blocking, IE-Spyad, mvps hosts file and Firefox Adblock, so maybe something is blocking most of the ads if you see many?

[polonus]

Hi FreewheelinFrank and SirAlleyCat,

If the young masters wants to have google without these ads use scroogle. No ads same content, just super. Here is where to go for the scraper:
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
Enjoy this. Have a gorgious weekend you two,

yours faithfully,

polonus

[SirAlleyCat]

Scroogle rocks, thanks. 

As far as the number of ads, I had 4, so some of your site rejections apparently work.

[FreewheelinFrank]

It seems there is spyware which is injecting Google Ads into Web Pages:

http://www.benedelman.org/news/060605-1.html

[polonus]

Well FreewheelinFrank,

There are also allegations that Goooogle adware is financially aiding spyware installs from affiliated parties, so it helps spyware, and does not help fighting it.
If you want those who help finance this: http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/investors/ There are other search agents that invest see: Kanoodle. Conclusion the Internet gets more and more pest-ridden and the burden is to much towards the end-user, who has not or not always the expertise to keep it from their computers, and from the other end the financial gains are that big that spyware or ad-ware companies look for every loophole to go on installing unwanted spy- and adware.

greets,

polonus

[rdsu]

If you use Firefox, you can try this great extension to config all the Google services, remove ads: CustomizeGoogle