Hi everyone,

This is my first thread and I am asking a question may be its very silly but please comment on it.

Firstly I am a PHP developer (I work primarily in PEAR) . Yesterday I was chatting with a friend of my from my previous company (he primarily works in CAKE PHP as he is more experienced than me) and he was telling me that he and some of his colleagues have developed a kind of application with java and cake php that will do the following:

When someone on the computer with the developed application searches in google for a specific keyword he will not get the original results but a result that will be predefined websites for that keyword on the first page as decided by the master of the infecting application.Now he also claims that its will take some time for google to figure out the things.

Now what I want to ask is that is this possible without google knowing , if it is possible at all. And if its possible what will be that value of the thing.

I believe that it would take G00gle awhile to figure out what's going on because the changes to the SERPs would be occurring client-side. There are ways that they could find out, but it would be computationally intensive. Because of the obscurity of the method, coming up with a solution to deal with it may not be possible unless they know exactly how it's being implemented. In other words, they'd probably need to first be tipped off to the method by someone like yourself who has mentioned this plan in a public forum.

Hey I was planning on utilizing the script and not inform google.

Originally Posted by 195471

I believe that it would take G00gle awhile to figure out what's going on because the changes to the SERPs would be occurring client-side. There are ways that they could find out, but it would be computationally intensive. Because of the obscurity of the method, coming up with a solution to deal with it may not be possible unless they know exactly how it's being implemented. In other words, they'd probably need to first be tipped off to the method by someone like yourself who has mentioned this plan in a public forum.

it's like hijacking, when you click on the first google result you will redirected to your site right?
but if someone do it with careful, he will cashin millions from G, lol

Originally Posted by ronnie1984

Hey I was planning on utilizing the script and not inform google.

I have no doubt that you were planning to use the script in secrecy. However, it's no longer a secret because you have exposed the method on a public forum, which may be read by G00gle employees.

They are using what is known as a browser helper object... it is a toolbar or other such "installed" browser feature. Toolbars and the like can do anything. via javascript they have access to all the source the web browser is currently viewing. They can also perform file IO, background processes, network communication, etc... They probably have an exploit for forcing the BHO install without the normal security dialogs popping up. Once installed the toolbar could be active but minimized and then modifies the DOM whenever it matches the google search URL.

There is a $75 software called ToolBar studio that lets you build these. But plan on your GUIDs getting picked up by antivirus software pretty fast and any website offering the download being flagged by googles safe browsing service. Of course with the addition of a sneaky install exploit your friends probably don't care.

Totally doable and not a new idea.