Google Search Engine Workaround

Google Search Engine can intentionally lead you astray, rather than help you find the information you need. Here are some tricks for using Google to still get what you seek. Google Search has recently been modified to maximize the owners' profit while sacrificing utility for the user. There are many other search engines available, and this Instructable is not intended to compare them to Google. This Instructable is about using Google and getting good results from it. To see my related Instructables, click on unclesam in the INFO box on the right of this page, then repeatedly click "NEXT" see them all.

Step 1 Never Click on the Sponsored Links

A Google search will have a short list of sponsored links at the top of the page of hits. These links appear solely because the owners of the sites have paid money to Google. They typically will have only a vague connection to the object of your search. Never click on any of them, they are a waste of your time.

Comments

[paperrhino]

I was curious so I tried to reproduce these results. Either Google has stopped this behavior, or more likely, something else is wrong. For me, the link goes directly to the emoneycentral.com site, not pebble.com or such.

In fact, all of the search results on the first two pages go directly to the URL that Google indicates they go to.

It is possible that there was a temporary problem, Google stopped this behavior, or your machine is infected with malware. My parents have encountered malware that exhibit this sort of behavior in the past.

[REA]

ya its malware. ive had it before and fixed it. forgot how to though.

[BradleyEE]

Yes, definitely malware. It wouldn't really be a very useful search engine if you could never get to the actual result of the search.

When I've seen this one, it is a rootkit, which is able to hide itself from the usual antivirus programs. ComboFix is the program that removes it. Check Google to see where to download and how to use it. (You'll probably have a to use a different computer that doesn't have this malware already on it...)

[adamazing]

Sponsored links aren't always "a waste of time". If you're searching for laptops, it's not necessarily a waste of your time to click on a sponsored link to Dell.com (unless you really don't want a Dell laptop!). But yes, if you're searching for something like, say, "exchange rates" then the sponsored links will probably be to ForEx trading companies, which may not be relevant.

The click-jacking thing you're seeing is almost certainly nothing to do with Google. My bet would be with @paperrhino and @tocsik and be on "malware" of some description.

[tocsik]

I've never had a problem with being redirected to a different site when left clicking in google. I even attempted to duplicate the results you are showing by doing the same search and clicking the same link multiple times. they all took me to straight to emoneycentral.com.

The only time I've ever had a problem even similar to this it was due to a virus. I'm not saying that is whats going on in your case. I'm just saying that I've never had google redirect me to any site other than the one I was expecting after clicking the link.