how come my google isn't googling properly?

Can you give us a concrete example so we can test it and see if we’re getting the same behavior?

ok. i just did it to give you an example. i put in “scrapbooking” and on the list that came up, the first thing was “scrapbooking.com” so i clicked on that and i got ebay. totally unrelated.

here are two simple solutions. both are good, i prefer the first

give me back my google
scroogle

you’re very welcome

Interesting, I’m not getting the behavior your are describing at all. I googled “scrapbooking”, and the top hit (non-affiliate hit, so not an item in the yellow box) was scrapbooking.com, just as you say. But I don’t get eBay when I click then link, I get www.scrapbooking.com, which appears to be an entriely legitimate scrapbooking publication.

Two total stabs in the dark: are you really on google.com, and not googol.com or something that might be trying to look like google? Or, is it possible you have malware on your machine/browser that is redirecting you to other sites?

Can anyone else reproduce ica’s problem?

hijack this! is free. install it. run a scan. you’ll soon find out if your browser’s been hijacked, and what to do about your hosts file.

intego.com posted an advisory concerning this…you may have downloaded a Trojan horse that has hijacked your DNS server called OSX.RSPlug.A that is redirecting your computer…that is if you’re on a Mac.

http://www.intego.com/news/ism0705.asp

That doesn’t sound like a DNS issue to me—the expired page in the middle is a hint that you’ve got some malware that’s redirecting you at random. I definitely think you need to clean up your computer—but in the meantime, you can try a different browser and see if you get better results.

@jeffporten-yeah good advice, but I think the intego folks describe the issue I mentioned above as malware that’s redirecting (hijacking) via DNS-did you check out the link I posted?

They (intego) also mentioned that the potential is there that when you access ‘secure’ sites such as eBay or PayPal to access your personal information, the malware can redirect this traffic to a fraudulent server or capture data en-route (?)...don’t know about the technology behind this but sounds scary…anyone else look into this issue or ck out hijack this! ?

i am definitely using google and not something else. i am not a technical wizard but i do know how to search on a search engine. i also tried deleting google from my favorites and re-adding it and i get same problem. again, not from other search engines like ask.com. it makes me not want to use google. thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming!