strang behavour with google

[Dave10]

Its been a long time but you have never let me down yet here is one I cannot get my head round I'm running xp home and either firefox or chrome gives the same problem I belong to a astronomy related forum called donastro if I google donastr I get sent to lankasri a sri lankan tamil site I've just done a clean install reformat etc and still get the same problem I've tried mcafee,adaware,spybot and avast and they all say a clean system I must admit I moved all my docs to a seperate partition but not moved them back yet has anyone any ideas ? regards Dave

 

[DrB0b]

Are you speaking about one of these sites:

http://www.donastro.org.uk/

http://donastro.blogspot.com/

If so, are you saying if you google search donastro its first link is to something Sri Lankan? Or are you typing the above link into the address bar and being redirected to the Sri Lankan site?

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[vacunita]

If its any consolation, its not just you, I get the same behavior, I think its something more related to google's own search algorithm than something on your computer.

Googling donastro yields the correct website as the top result.

Not sure why google is relating donastr to lankasri.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[Turkbear]

Try the ideas here, you may be infected by overclick.cn

thread779-1592966






To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[Dave10]

yes this is our site a new webmaster cocked things up so it doesn't display correctly in firefox.What I'm doing is typing into the search box and as I type, google gives me a choice as I type the letters but when I get to type the letter r the only choice is lankasri I guessed I had caught a nasty so I took the easy way out and reformated it didn't have much installed as its only used to control my slr for astrophotography but its still the same

 

[vacunita]

That's not what is happening. Its not redirecting anywhere. The Actual search results are for lankasri rather than donastr when you search for donastr it even asks you if you actually want to search for donastr.

No clicking is yet involved, and no redirection, this is all in the google search results.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[DrB0b]

Thanks vac for clarifying

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[Dave10]

so why dont I have the same problem using linux/firefox xp/firefox on my desktop and 30 odd other members not getting it ?

 

[vacunita]

That I can't answer. I know I'm pretty sure its not an infection, since this machine was just re-installed also, and there's nothing other than antivirus, and the browsers.

And it happens for me on Chrome, IE and FF, haven't loaded up Safari to test.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[DrB0b]

What version of Firefox are you using? Dont think it will matter tho cause it looks like an inherent function of the Google algorithm.

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[vacunita]

Firefox 4.0.1
IE 8
Chrome 12.0.742.100

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[Dave10]

Many thanks for all the help I've just done a scan of the other partition and that's clean, in retrospect it does just seem like the google search results returning something odd but it started suddenly which seemed strange at least it gives me peace of mind I'm not carrying something nasty on my laptop.Thanks once again Dave G8frf

 

[linney]

Are you still seeing this problem, I ask because Googling brings up links to the "Doncaster Astronomical Society" and nothing to do with any Sri Lankan site? I don't have any "suggested sites" from Google (prior to the search) and I'm using IE 9 in Windows 7.

Does it help if you try a different search engine?

 

[Dave10]

yes I still have the problem so I've just tried a few search engines bing.yahoo,dogpile,altavista.aol.and ie all give a clear result so it seems to be connected with google search engine but I use google on my desktop without any problems although its a different version because I use ubuntu linux on my desktop but other members of the society use xp/firefox /google without any problems

 

[mintjulep]

I get the same.

Google's instant search (or whatever they call it) relies at least in part on predictive text stuff.

Since "donastro" isn't an English word Google is trying to figure out what actual word you might be trying to type, and it's best guess is "lankasri" for some reason.

If you just go ahead and type "donastro" and hit return or click search Google goes off and finds some relevant sites.