What to do if Google Thinks You’re Not Human
Have you ever been searching the Internet with Google to find resumes or LinkedIn profiles, and instead of getting your search results, you get a nice apology from Google saying that your computer or network might be sending automated queries and can’t process your request?
In the past week alone I have received a number of inquiries from curious sourcers and recruiters as to what to do about this.
Typically, this notice is accompanied by a CAPTCHA that will allow you to enter some characters to prove that you’re human.
You are human, right?
Performing a lot of X-Ray searches of LinkedIn profiles seems to trigger Google to ask me for proof of humanity.
However, just the other day I was searching for resumes online, and when I clicked to see the “cached” version of a search result, I got a different Google apology. This one didn’t even allow me to prove my humanity. Dang!
If you choose to click on “Google Help“, you’ll see that they advise you to #1 Check for malware on your computer, #2 Contact your network administrator, and #3 If the problem persists, have your network administrator contact Google.
Apparently, sending automated queries of any sort to Google is against their Terms of Service, which states that among other things, it is unacceptable to use software to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks on Google for various queries, ‘Meta-searching’ Google, and performing ‘offline’ searches on Google.
Last time I checked, manually searching for resumes and LinkedIn profiles isn’t any of the above.
What To Do
Because I get stopped by Google’s CAPTCHA quite frequently, I did actually contact Google, inasmuch as you can contact Google by filling out their form. Not sure if anything came of that as I have never heard back (not that I was expecting to).
However, what I have found is that simply clearing my browser’s cookies gets this annoying search result interruption to go away, at least for a while. You can be selective in clearing specific cookies or you can delete them all – which will remove your saved settings for sites you’ve previously visited. Small price to pay in order to get your search results from Google.
I hope that helps you if you ever got blocked by Google. Let me know if you have any other suggestions/fixes for this issue.
Thanks!
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Glen,
I thought I’d check out Twitter for a few minutes since I was unable to search on Google anymore because THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME FIVE SECONDS AGO. How weird is that? And, as usual, your solution worked perfectly. Thanks!
Another thing you can do in addition to clearing your browser’s cookies is to download the autopager FireFox add-on tool, which automatically loads next pages when you reach the end of a page.
If you click on the next sequential number or “Next” link, you will get the “We’re sorry….” page.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for posting! This has become a *big* issue in the last 4-6 weeks or so. Fellow members of “Boolean Strings” describe the issue happening as soon as they start running advanced queries – be that using the asterisk, operators, or setting the number of results to 100 per page. Use Autopager or Fastest Chrome for a few minutes, and you are blocked. What a shame.
Irina
If it’s a simple matter of clearing the cache, there are Firefox add-ons that let you “reboot” (i.e. restart automatically) the browser with options for clearing the cache, cookies and other settings.
Just search https://addons.mozilla.org/ for “restart firefox”
Glen, this happened to me a few times recently. I noticed though, the only occurrences were when I was running back to back search variations of each other, one after another to get the desired results.
I came up with several of my own fixes, though effect is similar to yours of clearing cache.
1. Switch browsers. If using Firefox, move to IE or Chrome
2. If using Firefox, create a couple of spare profiles for such an inconvenience. “Firefox.exe -p” runs the profile editor. Easy to create additional profile such as one named “Profile2″. Run second profile with “Firefox.exe -p “profile2″. In the future, the second profile is always there and available should the need arise.
Give it a little time and the problem goes away and you can return to the original browser that Google though was not a real person.
I like Ollezaza’s comment as well. May have to download that add-on
I have gotten this so often lately…and only recently have gotten the CAPTCHA’s – thank goodness. I have just been switching to IE or Chrome. I have gotten blocked doing everything from X-ray searches of LI profiles to the advanced string or back to back variations mentioned above. This has been driving me nuts so I am mildly comforted that I am not alone
Thanks for raising the issue!! I surely appreciate the suggestions made by all — I will be sure to monitor your post to see if more come in
Thank you to everyone who has responded thus far and for the added suggestions! I did try reconfiguring FF’s options/settings, but I switched back. I’ve found that simply deleting your temporary Internet files will also do the trick most of the time, even if you don’t clear your cookies (which can be annoying to lose saved data). I’ve never switched browsers because I refuse to let Google force me to change my behavior – they are clearly being overzealous if simply searching for resumes and even clicking on a cached result causes this issue. To not even give a user the ability to deal with a CAPTCHA (as annoying as that is, especially when they can be well-nigh indecipherable) is unacceptable IMHO.
Has anyone try opening a new chrome window with Incognito mode? I am not sure if that will do the trick.
Another thing you can do in addition to clearing your browser’s cookies is to download the autopager FireFox add-on tool, which automatically loads next pages when you reach the end of a page.
If you click on the next sequential number or “Next” link, you will get the “We’re sorry….” page.
Glen and All,
It has become extremely hard to use Google due to this issue. I was able to publish a relevant article on Technorati. I hope to bring Google’s attention to the issue, so that we can hopefully have good experience with Google again.
Could you please help by commenting? http://technorati.com/blogging/article/dear-google-i-am-human/
Thanks,
Irina
Glen, try unlocking CAPTCHA on your Google account. Here’s a video tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7hPXS9_Wo
Be well.
Ami – excellent discovery – thanks for sharing!
Here is another work around on this issue.
When I am doing xray searches, I use firefox so that I can right click and open in tabs. Once I reach 20 or so, I see this error.
If you look at the url when you get this error, you will see something like this:
http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:__05aeExurgJ:www.linkedin.com/in/sylviadevlin%2Bsite:linkedin.com%2B%28inurl:pub%2BOR%2Binurl:in%29%2B-intitle:directory%2B-inurl:dir%2Bhealth%2Bpacs%2Badministrator%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus
Get rid of
“http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:__05aeExurgJ”
and
“%2Bsite:linkedin.com%2B%28inurl:pub%2BOR%2Binurl:in%29%2B-intitle:directory%2B-inurl:dir%2Bhealth%2Bpacs%2Badministrator%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus”
So that you have this as the url:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviadevlin
then hit enter and BAM, you got the public profile.
I do this rather than clearing Cache, because I normally have logged into accounts that I am also actively using.
Hope this helps.