Googlesearch.me

Googlesearch.me is a dubious search engine, which hosts a large number of randomly chosen popular Google Plus posts, as well as a search feature, which has an invisible ad on top of it. This means that whenever the visitors attempt to access the search field, they may click on an ad that spawns a pop-up window that may contain all sorts of marketing content unknowingly. The blog posts featured below the search field appear to be reliable as they link to popular news outlets.

The search feature, however, behaves a bit suspicious because it does not take the user to the Google Search, despite the name of the website. Instead, the search query is executed through Goto.maxdealz.com, and then the user is taken to a results page provided by Yahoo Search. While this behavior is not harmful, it is clear that the authors of Googlesearch.me have configured the search to work like this so that it can generate traffic for a 3rd-party website like Maxdealz.com. Naturally, the redirects that Googlesearch.me performs may change at any point so that it is possible that in the future the page might take users to less trustworthy Web destinations that may be used to host potentially harmful content.

It is likely that Googlesearch.me is brought to the attention of users via a browser hijacking application, which might be installed with the assistance of a software bundle silently. If this happens, then the users affected by the issue might find out that their browser's homepage and new tab page have been amended to Googlesearch.me without their knowledge. The best way to deal with minor issues like that is to install and run a reputable anti-virus application, which can help identify and remove intrusive applications.