We’re sorry….
…but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

This is just a portion of the text I am getting everytime I go to google.com earlier. At first it shows a captcha then after I enter the captcha, the same page shows, this time without the captcha. I thought something is wrong in my computer, so I checked for viruses, spywares, or any other malicious wares with several security softwares but got nothing.

Then I thought that it might be due to some of the keyword rank checking softwares and tools I have installed so I immediately removed them all from my system then went to web search help center to send google additional information and get it fixed. After around 2-3 hours, my access to google.com was restored. Not really sure what really caused it as I haven’t got any other details coming from google. Anyway, here are some of the ranking tools I have before:

Aaron Wall’s Rank Checker – a free and fast Firefox extension which you can use to track your rankings over time

Agent Web Ranking – I have the free trial installed for a week, pro version goes around $800 for 1 year but it’s a cool tool so worth the price

I am now thinking of going back to the good old days, using web based rank checking tools like google rankings or the digitalpoint keyword ranking tool. Good thing I still have the old Google API key with me.