Google: 403 Forbidden

I was relieved this morning when I read in a posting by John Andrews that I am not the only one who has, for days, had problems with Google search-queries. For years, Google is trying to identify and block automated queries. This is a comprehensible attitude, considering that “PHP-worms” use search engines to find more exploitable installations of [Worldpress|Joomla|...], which is realizable without too much of a disadvantage for the normal users.

Google's sporting ambition admittedly takes an extra step: when the Webmaster Guidelines state you should not use automated queries to check positions, then they will attempt to do just that. Google implemented an algorithm which tries to detect such automatic queries and serves up a Captcha before it directs you to the actual results page. The bothersome part is that now, while my automated queries still work fine, I am forced to enter the Captcha in my browser more and more often. In the last few days, especially when I am intensely searching with special search-operators such as “site:” and when I have to rephrase search queries multiple times, I will, with near certainty, get hit with a Captcha by Google. Hopefully this is just due to an Intern who changed the parameters.

Ps: while Google is, for days on end, preaching in their webmasterblogs that 404-errors should be accompanied by the corresponding HTTP-statuscode so that the Googlebot has less work to do and so he can identify non existing sites easier, they seem more lax with their own error messages.
While the title for the “automated queries” sports the correct HTTP-errorcode, it is missing from the crucial HTTP-header.

Johannes Beus - on Mon (08/18/2008) at 12:56 PM

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