Unwanted hits on Google

[Tiger]

My computer has taken to returning a whole lot of undesired and irrelevant hits when I do a Google search. I'll type something like Woodturning in the search box and the first 10 or so hits will be about China, spyware and even sites. After the first 10 or so irrelevant entries we then get into woodturning information. This behaviour does not happen all the time though so the search facility will work ok 50% of the time.

What is the fix of this?

[robbo266317]

It's quite likely you have Malware in the form of a browser hijacker.
Download the software from here and it should clean it up for you, it's free for home use.

SUPERAntiSpyware.com | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!

[arose62]

And I'm a big fan of OpenDNS - change a setting in your modem or router, and it works for all PCs on your network.

Selectable levels of filtering, and free!

opendns.com

Cheers,
Andrew
(no affiliation, just a happy user)

[AUSSIE]

Your not THE tiger are you.
Been on the news abit lately
That could be the trouble

[munruben]

Could be a seven iron stuck in the motherboard.

[Jim Carroll]

May even need to update your google DRIVERS

[bsrlee]

Google has 'sponsored' links that will appear before the real search results, and are frequently nothing to do with what you searched for - the fact that they are irrelevant is the biggest give away. Not much you can do when they are part of the feed from Google.

Of course a good rummaging around with some anti spyware & a good anti virus program should rout any outside freeloaders too - something we all should do more often. If 'kids' or visitors can get to the computer, then you probably should also pick 'delete history' and 'delete cookies' too - you will have to do a full login for sites like this, but it may make the problem go away.

[robbo266317]

Did you sort out your problem?
If not then what browser are you using, I use Firefox with AdBlockPlus which strips all ads including the google suggestions.
Hopefully you have already resolved this issue.

[Cruzi]

Google has 'sponsored' links that will appear before the real search results, and are frequently nothing to do with what you searched for - . Not much you can do when they are part of the feed from Google.

Actually, the sponsored links are always relevent to something either in your search or your browser history.

So if you have been looking at chinese info sites and/or , the sponsored links reflect this.

Browser search hijack viruses usually only redirect when you click on results.