Why does Avast! sometimes have a virus alert when using google?

[alexthegreat]

Well a few days ago I searched in Sprint in google.ca and ended up getting a virus alert for VBS Malware-gen (It was trying to connect) all of a sudden and when I disconnected it kept happening until I closed the browser.  Now... What the **** happened?!   Here is a video of it in action (but a different search... exact same thing except that user has Avast! pro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va55ze1VKD0

Here's another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwKaEC7s4VY

Is this like Avast! trying to warn me the site is malicious or is it an exploit... if so the internet is not safe at all anymore  :'( :'(

Good thing avast! saved me though 

I never upgraded to Firefox 3.0 yet...
(This happened in Firefox 2.0.14)

So is it an exploit?

[FreewheelinFrank]

You have some sort of link scanner which is connecting to each link on the results page and avast! is detecting the HTML downloaded, I think.

EDIT: The flipping green stars indicate that the link is being scanned, but by what?

[DavidR]

Are they green starts or green circles FWF's image isn't that clear and on dial-up I'm not visiting youtube, life is too short.

If green circles, see image, it is the WOT add-on for firefox.

[alexthegreat]

I got linkscanner and wot.  I guess it's linkscanner because every video for that ends up having linkscanner.

[Lisandro]

There are a lot of complains with Linkscanner (bandwidth usage).
You can test Finjan, SiteAdvisor, Scandoo for instance.

[DavidR]

I got linkscanner and wot.  I guess it's linkscanner because every video for that ends up having linkscanner.

Linkscanner is a huge waste of bandwidth in google searches as for probably 95+% of the hits you will never visit, so that is a waste of your valuable bandwidth, better to pre-scan only those you intend to visit.

[VTDIZ.COM]

Avast vs Google

[DavidR]

It has nothing to do with avast! but other tools scanning page content of the links returned in google search results.