Forbidden to search Google?

When doing a search at Google lately I have been getting a lot of 403's (Forbidden) such as the one shown below. It happens about once out of every 10 or 12 searches. These 403's all say that my query resembles an automated request from a computer virus.

For example, I am shopping for Christmas gifts and got 403's on the following search requests. I quote them exactly as submitted...

1) buy solid copper cross pendants

2) buy child's bible

I also got 403's on the following simple queries...

1) what is celtic cross?

2) where is queen maud's land?

I checked with Roadrunner tech support (my ISP) & they replied that it has nothing to do with their ISP services.

This problem started yestrerday and, as noted above, the 403's only happen about once every 10 or 12 searches. Is this happening to anyone else? Any ideas what is going on? Any ideas as to how to fix whatever is wrong?

 

I tried them all with Opera and had no error whatsoever. Do you get the same results with other browsers?

 

Heres one previous thread, and heres another one.

 

I got it too. I clicked the 'info' button to a 'Tiny Watcher' find, and it gave me that Google page.

If Google becomes unreliable, where do we go next?

 

Hello,

Have not noticed it. But I did have some twilight zone problems with Google once in a while, they went away after a few hours - a day at most.

Try clearing your cache. Do you have a static IP - if not, try a new one, maybe it can work...

Mrk

 

I have switched my browser's autosearch site to...
http://search.yahoo.com

It looks good so far. Fast searches. Also, Yahoo's hits seem a tad more relevant than Google's.

However, I am very much interested in seeing additional suggestions as to a search-engine substitute for Google.

Google is using a shotgun to protect itself against computerized bad guys. Unfortunately, Google seems unconcerned that they are shooting us good guys with that same shotgun blast. Maybe they need reminding that they are NOT the only superb search engine.

 

I just use Scroogle. Although it uses the Google engine, I dont if its affected by those messages.

 

I had that same message pop up a few times last week, and, if I remember correctly, it was a fairly innocent, mundane search. It has not happened again, however. As far as a substitute, I have been trying out Ixquick and Dogpile, both meta search engines. So far Dogpile seems pretty good, although Ixquick claims to have better privacy policies.

 

It looks like your searches were taken to be like a DOS attack to the Google site. When the website can't take a flood of requests, they usually reject them.