Google cocks up SERPS

Today was a bit weird. Whilst searching for things using Google, all the websites were flagged as potentially harmful to your computer - even Google's itself.

I thought it was just me at first, but then the BBC website also reported on it later on in the day. Here's Google's explanation:

"What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs."

I know it's not a hugely news-worthy story, and maybe a bit off topic on this blog, but it did happen to me, and I was a bit stumped. I suppose it just goes to show that even the big guys have "human errors" sometimes, too!

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