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Scroogle Says Google Is Blocking Their Privacy Search Engine

Barry Schwartz on February 14, 2012 at 3:51 pm

If you try to conduct a search at Scroogle, the portal that lets you search Google in private, Scroogle will tell you that Google is blocking them.

I just tested it and Scroogle returns an error message that reads, “so sorry… Google is temporarily blocking this Scroogle server.”

This happened back in May 2010 as well, and probably happens fairly often.

Google told BetaBeat that they are not manually blocking Scroogle but they do have automated systems in place that “deter scraping or excessive queries to Google, and spikes in query traffic can cause issues for some sites.” So this is probably a case of a spike in traffic from Scroogle and those automated tools preventing the spike from hurting’s Google’s servers.

Google’s terms of service do give them the right to turn off services like Scroogle from working but Google has yet to block Scroogle forever. I’d be surprised if this service is off for more than a day.

Daniel Brandt is known to be an individual who is extremely anti Google’s practices.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.