Seen this? Google pissing me off on its homepage simple search

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

This has happened to me at least three times in as many days, and it’s annoying.

I do a simple search at google.com, this time it was Penn Jillette.

Results come up, at the top of everything is exactly what I was looking for, the simple non-ad-related number one result, his own site: www.pennandteller.com.

So I immediately go to click it, my finger is already in motion, and a tenth of a second before I click, it changes.

A peach colored box appears, with two ads in it, in this case #1 was Showtime, and #2 was Vegas tickets for their show.

That’s all fine, the ads make sense, but what pisses me off, is that I see the #1 result, I go to click it, and *then *this ad shows up, pushing the real result down, and I accidentally click a Showtime ad.

It just doesn’t seem fitting with their supposed “don’t be evil” philosophy. It feels like they just have it timed precisely as to invite misclicks.

#2

Sounds like it’s time to run Spybot and MalwareBytes.

#3

I don’t think it’s a Google thing, it’s just a page loading thing. Happens more often on mobile browsers since they’re so small. I thought it could be solved by loading the page so the link under your mouse stays the same (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=628602) but people said it would be too hard to do.

#4

Google doesn’t do peach-coloured, pop-up ads. A program on your computer is intercepting your Google results and showing those ads. As mister nyx said, you need to scan your computer.

#5

OP didn’t say it was a popup. The background of google ads at the top of the screen is beige/pink.

At least it is when I use my desktop running firefox.

#6

I gave up on google for other reasons - mainly the privacy issues, but also how it keeps resetting my preferences. Also I know it’s trivial but I got weary of these “artsy” google graphics celebrating Joe Artist nobody has ever heard of’s 193d birthday.

Results aren’t as comprehensive, but I like Goduckgo.com.

#7

Are you using Firefox? Remove the IE Tabs Plus extension.

I was having the same issue and just looked into it due to this thread. The links all have a “Google-co.com” domain and looking that up pointed me to it being IE Tabs Plus. I just overarmed that, tested a search I did minutes ago and got the ad box (“grapefruit”) and now it’s clean. IE Tabs Plus is inserting the ads.

#8

I have no idea what “overarmed” was supposed to be. I removed it.

#9

My iPad does it if I don’t wait until the page has fully loaded. I see what I want and go to click it, but the page is still moving things around.

#10

Thank you!

That was it. The ads did have the google-co.com domain, and removing IE Tabs Plus got rid of them.

Woot!

#11

You’re welcome. You indirectly helped me as well since I also assumed it was just Google until your thread inspired me to look into it deeper.

#12

You, Sir, are a gentleman and scholar.

#13

For what it’s worth, I’m using IE Tab 2…Google results look normal when the tab is inactive, but I do get a small ad on a peach background if I search with the tab active. The ad appears to be Google based though.

#14

Huh…just tried this on my home computer, and the ad I’m getting is actually generated by Google. There’s a little link in the upper right corner labeled “Why this ad?”; when clicked, a box pops up explaining that the ad is based on your search terms.

#15

This sort of thing is actually a security issue. There is a minimum reaction time for people, and browsers should be set up to ignore new screen information that has come in during that time. It is easy to set up a page that does this on purpose. Heck, it’s even the reason why there’s a default delay when downloading plugins in Firefox.

The concept of fixing it is simple, as stated above, but actually implementing it is a completely different paradigm to how applications work. At the very lease, you should be unable to click on a link that has only been active for less than the minimum time of perception (somewhere around 150ms, just less than 1/8 a second).