Whats going on with Google today? Getting loads of CAPTCHA's when surfing

[mikkydoos]

Whats going on with Google today? Getting loads of CAPTCHA's when surfing

[Steve21]

You'll find you get it sometimes if kids are doing a lot on Google "research" wise, as so many hits on the same thing come up from the single IP

 

Just ignoring it and generally goes away after a little

 

Steve

[Scotbynature]

we have has the same issue for the last few days. We found that the kids are using chrome but could use the google store to freely access proxy software to bypass our filtering so it looked like we had hundreds of requests coming from different IP addresses. I got rid of chrome from the network as it was no longer needed and it solved the problem.

[FN-GM]

we have has the same issue for the last few days. We found that the kids are using chrome but could use the google store to freely access proxy software to bypass our filtering so it looked like we had hundreds of requests coming from different IP addresses. I got rid of chrome from the network as it was no longer needed and it solved the problem.

 

If you need it again you can lock down the web store via group policy templates.

[theeggmaster]

We had this issue, but it took over a year to solve. Our external IP address changed and so Google thought we were making too many requests and basically shut down our searches until the requests died down. The thing that fixed it for me was when I finally got a contact at Google Search, and they said that the GPO that is provided doesn't have the correct search string in, so each search was making too many requests. Multiply that by the number of machines accessing Google, and it was in the thousands!

 

If anyone's interested, we replaced:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}&hl=en&gl=uk

with

http://pastebin.com/zJwD1kmc

(using pastebin because Edugeek's post editor is changing some characters to smileys)

Edited November 30, 2015 by theeggmaster

[mikkydoos]

We had this issue, but it took over a year to solve. Our external IP address changed and so Google thought we were making too many requests and basically shut down our searches until the requests died down. The thing that fixed it for me was when I finally got a contact at Google Search, and they said that the GPO that is provided doesn't have the correct search string in, so each search was making too many requests. Multiply that by the number of machines accessing Google, and it was in the thousands!

 

If anyone's interested, we replaced:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}&hl=en&gl=uk

with

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google\:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

 

Which GPO would that be @theeggmaster ?

Edited November 30, 2015 by elsiegee40

[theeggmaster]

These ones:

 

https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chrome/policy/policy_templates.zip

(From https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/187202?hl=en)

[mikkydoos]

These ones:

 

https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chrome/policy/policy_templates.zip

(From https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/187202?hl=en)

 

 

Oh, I have the Chrome ADMX's but which setting are you referring to ?

[mikkydoos]

Erm... and since that day it's gone !!!

 

 

Hmmmmm

[theeggmaster]

This setting in particular.

 

[mikkydoos]

Nice one @theeggmaster. Big thanks

[Arthur]

using pastebin because Edugeek's post editor is changing some characters to smileys

For future reference placing CODE tags around the text will solve that issue.

 

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

[theeggmaster]

For future reference placing CODE tags around the text will solve that issue.

 

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

Thanks for that. I knew there would be a way!

[beany1]

sorry to dig up an oldish thread. I'm trying to implement this, am I supposed to change the URL code that has been mentioned?

 

I've edited the user's group policy and added this as the default search engine, along with default search engine name (and some other unrelated policies such as home page) all work apart from the URL. Going to chrome://settings/searchEngines the new default doesn't show up, checking chrome://policy it says "Invalid search URL". however all other policies have applied.

 

Having lots of trouble with the captcha's showing up - hoping this will resolve it!

[theeggmaster]

You don't need to modify the URL code at all. You just paste it into Default search provider search URL.

[beany1]

@theeggmaster thanks, done that though. On the client going to chrome://policy shows all the other group policies loading, but says that the URL is an "Invalid search URL".

 

All the other settings from GP are showing as status "ok". Checking chrome://settings/searchengines this new default from GP doesn't show. I thought this maybe some sort of copy paste/internet formatting issue, so I copied the URL into chrome://settings/searchEngines and it lets me add and use it! So it's just deploying it with GP that isn't working...

 

If you go to chrome://policy does it show as status ok for the URL?

[theeggmaster]

No, on mine it says Invalid search URL. However, it absolutely stopped us having the Captchas or any issues whatsoever. Not had them since I implemented it. Do your Google searches in the search bar work?

[beany1]

oh confusing, well if you check in chrome://settings/searchEngines is it still set as the default search what chrome comes with? this:

 

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

This setting hasn't changed it for me, its still the original URL... so searching from the omnibox is still going through the standard URL... so yeah still works...

[theeggmaster]

It's definitely applying for me:

 

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

Edited June 9, 2016 by theeggmaster

[beany1]

If that code snippit is from your searchEngine screen, then that's a different URL than you originally supplied in pastebin...

 

notice the "google:iOSSearchLanguage" part

 

I'm pretty sure that's the default URL which includes the iOSSearchLanguage line... your orig URL doesn't have this in.

[theeggmaster]

The one that is in Pastebin is what is in my actual Group Policy

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

The one I pasted in my last post is what Google Chrome is reporting in chrome://settings/searchEngines

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

However, as pasting the original code in Pastebin into Group Policy worked for me first time and seemed to fix the Captcha issue, I had never had a cause to check chrome://settings/searchEngines.

[theeggmaster]

Originally in the Group Policy, we had the setting

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}&hl=en&gl=uk

 

I've copied the advice I received from Google in July 2015 below:

-----------------------Start of Google email-----------------------

Thanks for the thorough response and info. I contacted the search team who suggested the following:

 

- They should review their network for evidence of Hola installs, which is a peer-to-peer VPN service that often proxies abuse. They may be able to track down machines running the Hola exit node by looking for DNS lookups in the domain hola.org. If DNS logs are not available, watch for traffic to the IPs their DNS entries point to -- some likely DNS names they use are included in the analysis athttps://malwr.com/analysis/ZDE4MTBjZGYwYmY4NDdkYjk0YmUwNzljODY3OWVhOTA/

- Changing default settings can cause problems... in particular they say they changed the Chrome default search engine to

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}&hl=en&gl=uk

-- they should put this back to its default setting of:

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

- Separating the BYOD devices from the managed devices is a good idea. I'm not clear on whether they've already done this (are the BYOD machine all on the guest network?).

 

Note that blocks may take some time to expire, but if they make the above changes they should see improvement within a few hours.

-----------------------End of Google email-----------------------

 

So I just pasted that code in, and voila, it worked for us.

[beany1]

Argh ok thanks for your time @theeggmaster, I've never set an alternate search URL just left it as default until I found this thread. . The URL you are coping from Chrome (the url with iOSSearchLanguage) is the default search URL that Chrome comes with...Chrome here is already set to that.

 

Darn back to the drawing board.

[theeggmaster]

The one without iOSSearchLanguage is the one that the Google Search team suggested I try, after the default search URL didn't work. Bear in mind it took me over a year and a half to get this answer from them. We were down to using Bing for searching (even though we're a Google Apps for Education school).