Google showing fake Sponsored links before real Bitcointalk site

[LonelyEcho]

Today, I searched Bitcointalk on Google and saw a Sponsor link. And below is the real website https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://bitcointalk.org/&ved=2ahUKEwi6m_yInpmQAxVuUGcHHbI4JygQFnoECCAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3dUt6E1-k88EIlB10O6eKA
https://talkimg.com/images/2025/10/14/UMP9w3.jpeg



I didn't understand it at first. Later, after searching online, I came to know that these ads are displayed by Google in a paid manner. That is, anyone can place such ads through a paid method if they want. So they are not always real or trustworthy.
 Many times, these types of cloud mining or free bitcoin sites are actually scam projects. They lure a user's information or investment by offering free mining and big profits.

I would like to know from experienced people how to keep our information safe from fake and fraudulent sites?

[alani123]

On firefox desktop, install uBlock Origin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

On firefox android, install uBlock Origin mobile:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin/

If you're on an Apple iPhone, tough luck. Apple is hellbent on wanting you to see ads.

Ad blocking is like a security measure these days. Your mom and pops could be confused by these malicious ads. And google doesn't care so long as they make buck on their clicks.

[bitbollo]

the better answer should be: don't trust, verify.
it's better you save your favorite website in your browser and ALWAYS double check the url.
In this case you have been lucky because the url of sponsored link was different from the one you have been interested... but in the meantime please be aware that many scam have been run in the past with this trick like with exchanges or even privnote (a site used for sharing one-time-read messages).

[EarnOnVictor]

There's nothing we or anybody can do about it, that's Google for you, it has started many years ago. Google cares only about its pocket. What do you expect this time that AI has taken over from search engines? Money must be made somehow.

It's even better now that the "sponsor" tag is boldly written underneath, it was worse before and has been a useful means by scammers to defraud people, especially if the scammers carefully created their website's names similarly to the original websites.

I can only advice people to be extremely careful when using any search engine or visiting any website. The real name should be ascertained.

[Churchillvv]

Companies or websites that advertise on google search engines use one method which is keyword triggering, and perhaps as long as you search the keywords which they have embedded on their sites, it pops up in the ads position first before google shows the real thing you’re searching for.

Hence you could just use the ads blocking methods so you don’t get to see this ads no more and perhaps some of the ads are not really bad but misleading from the initial thing one might be looking for. The forum has a .org domain so when you search it always use the .org so you see it first, and possibly bookmark it.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Ad blocking is like a security measure these days. Your mom and pops could be confused by these malicious ads. And google doesn't care so long as they make buck on their clicks.

I'll just add that the OP can think about trying the Tor browser, there are no such things there, so when you search for something through the search engine, you won't get some nonsense at the top of the search.

As you say, Google doesn't care too much about what kind of ads it shows as long as they make money that way. To me, it was always at least unethical behavior of such a large company, but then you realize that for them we are just ordinary numbers on which they profit.

[Charles-Tim]

I'll just add that the OP can think about trying the Tor browser, there are no such things there, so when you search for something through the search engine, you won't get some nonsense at the top of the search.

Tor is a very good browser, it makes use of Duckduckgo search engine. But if there are many fake sites of a site, the search engine may not give accurate result. I noticed this when there was still Chipmixer on this forum that has many fake and clone sites, all the search engines including Duckduckgo give inaccurate results. But about sponsored link ads, you will not see it there.

Also there are other browsers but less privacy ones that people can change the search engine to others like Duckduckgo. I think almost all browsers have this.

[Alpha Marine]

I usually don't click the "sponsored" sites when is search for something on Google, except I know the site and I know it's authentic. Most of the time, they're not genuine, especially when you search for something that requires you to pay money. 

it has started many years ago. Google cares only about its pocket. What do you expect this time that AI has taken over from search engines? Money must be made somehow.

In this case, it's not like Google are just focused on money. The software used keywords, traffic and paid service. The fact that a person pays doesn't mean their site will be above all the other sites if it doesn't match the keyword. They use crawlers to process the site and rank it. This is why it helps to use ad blockers if you don't know which website is genuine or not. 

[Hatchy]

I would like to know from experienced people how to keep our information safe from fake and fraudulent sites?

Cloud mining ended a long time ago... Anything you see online now promising an easy way to mine is a definitive scam attempt.
Google's lack of action on security is a serious failure, putting many users at high risk. Phishing links actively try to trick and steal from unsuspecting users. Scammers succeed easily because so many people don't bother to verify if a link is authentic
the best defense is to be very careful before clicking any link or dealing with those frustrating, sudden pop up ads. Though our digital security is compromised, we still need to use the internet. You just need to be vigilant and protect yourself...

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

On firefox desktop, install uBlock Origin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

On firefox android, install uBlock Origin mobile:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin/

If you're on an Apple iPhone, tough luck. Apple is hellbent on wanting you to see ads.

Ad blocking is like a security measure these days. Your mom and pops could be confused by these malicious ads. And google doesn't care so long as they make buck on their clicks.

There are other tools, extensions as content blockers to use too.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/
https://www.privacytools.io/

Because of not perfect search results and efficiency of any tool, make sure to use different search engines and compare their search results with each other.
To be more careful, I recommend this website traffic checker
https://www.similarweb.com/website/

Phishing sites have low traffics that can be easily detected by similarweb.com

[Shishir99]

Sorry for off-topic

An interesting fact is that a newbie guy joined the forum, started posting on the Nigeria local board on the first day, and discovered Buy the DIP, and HODL (heaven for account farmers) thread on the same day, and their 2nd post was on that thread. Their fifth post on this forum is in the Wall Observer thread. Their 11th post on fillippone's thread to be merit assessed, and now their screenshot clearly shows they are from Bangladesh. These things are not adding up. OP tried well pretend to be a newbie. But terribly failed.

Google automatically detected his location and suggested his local language, but he forgot to remove that part from the screenshot. Mate, why not search in Bangla? Creating mutiple account is allowed. So why are you trying to hide your identity?

[NotATether]

If you're on an Apple iPhone, tough luck. Apple is hellbent on wanting you to see ads. ke buck on their clicks.

Search for "Adblock Plus" on the App Store and you're good to go, as long as you use Safari that is. But I think that would work with any other browser since they're all just Safari under the hood.

[mikel_012]

If you're on an Apple iPhone, tough luck. Apple is hellbent on wanting you to see ads.

Ad blocking is like a security measure these days. Your mom and pops could be confused by these malicious ads. And google doesn't care so long as they make buck on their clicks.

There is ad blocking for Safari on iOS, I use it: https://apps.apple.com/br/app/adblock-plus-for-safari-abp/id1028871868

And I think some browser apps also have this by default, like Brave for ios.

[DYING_S0UL]

I'll just add that the OP can think about trying the Tor browser, there are no such things there, so when you search for something through the search engine, you won't get some nonsense at the top of the search.

As you say, Google doesn't care too much about what kind of ads it shows as long as they make money that way. To me, it was always at least unethical behavior of such a large company, but then you realize that for them we are just ordinary numbers on which they profit.

I believe, for normal browsing TOR isn't the best choice. Because I do need my previous search history to search for relevant information when I visit the next time. But with TOR, I won't be able do achieve that. As you already know I use TOR, but for causal works, regular surfing I have been using Chrome, Mises, Firefox.

I would rather use an adblocker and be done with the sponsored ads.

Sorry for off-topic
snip....

Google automatically detected his location and suggested his local language, but he forgot to remove that part from the screenshot. Mate, why not search in Bangla? Creating mutiple account is allowed. So why are you trying to hide your identity?

He probably knew that Nigerian local is one of the most active locals and it has tons of active users. So it would be the perfect ground to fish for merit!
Lastly whenever I'm seeing something like this, I can definitely tell that its an alt account.

[Rikafip]

Google automatically detected his location and suggested his local language, but he forgot to remove that part from the screenshot. Mate, why not search in Bangla? Creating mutiple account is allowed. So why are you trying to hide your identity?

Maybe he is actually from Nigeria and just chose Bangladesh serer on his VPN, therefore having Bengali on that screenshot. 

Joke aside, he is obviosuly a merit farmer, but not a very good one since he didn't manage to farm a lot of merit before being exposed.

[dkbit98]

If you don't want to see ads and fake websites on top of search than you should use uBlock Origin extension, or alternative Brave browser that already have integrated adblocker.
In combination with ad blockers, I stopped using g00gle search for years and I don't miss it at all, Brave search became very good.
You can also enable ad blocking with manually entering DNS rules.

[Ultegra134]

The top results aren't what we'd call "organic"; they're sponsored, paid advertisements and are always marked as "sponsored" or "paid," I don't remember which. I've personally never seen it with Bitcointalk, but similar results appear when using Google search; usually they're regular ads, but sometimes these results display fake websites, even full-blown phishing attempts. It's disturbing because Google doesn't verify these websites as long as they're paid. Usually, these websites don't last long as they get reported, but there's a reason they still exist: because they're still finding victims.

[LonelyEcho]

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/10/10/UGWxoH.jpeg

Sorry for off-topic

An interesting fact is that a newbie guy joined the forum, started posting on the Nigeria local board on the first day, and discovered Buy the DIP, and HODL (heaven for account farmers) thread on the same day, and their 2nd post was on that thread. Their fifth post on this forum is in the Wall Observer thread. Their 11th post on fillippone's thread to be merit assessed, and now their screenshot clearly shows they are from Bangladesh. These things are not adding up. OP tried well pretend to be a newbie. But terribly failed.

Google automatically detected his location and suggested his local language, but he forgot to remove that part from the screenshot. Mate, why not search in Bangla? Creating mutiple account is allowed. So why are you trying to hide your identity?

What you have guessed is completely wrong. I have reviewed the screenshot carefully and then posted it here. I was doing some personal work from Nigeria by connecting to the VPN of the Indian server. And while searching on the BitcoinTalk forum with the VPN turned on, maybe Google is automatically showing the translation in Bengali, assuming that it is from that Indian server network.

[Slitters riot]

There's nothing we or anybody can do about it, that's Google for you, it has started many years ago. Google cares only about its pocket. What do you expect this time that AI has taken over from search engines? Money must be made somehow.

It's even better now that the "sponsor" tag is boldly written underneath, it was worse before and has been a useful means by scammers to defraud people, especially if the scammers carefully created their website's names similarly to the original websites.

I can only advice people to be extremely careful when using any search engine or visiting any website. The real name should be ascertained.

There is actually something that can be done about it.

Few browsers knew that google have been compromised so they implement extra security into their browsers and some even replace their browsers search engine with a bettter one.

You can't see similar nonsense happen on microsoft edge and brave browser, it is always firefox and chrome browser that has this problem, you should install them you will be able to tell the difference apart when using their search engines.

Still i am not against verification, whichever browser it may be, always verify the links first.

[Shishir99]

What you have guessed is completely wrong. I have reviewed the screenshot carefully and then posted it here. I was doing some personal work from Nigeria by connecting to the VPN of the Indian server. And while searching on the BitcoinTalk forum with the VPN turned on, maybe Google is automatically showing the translation in Bengali, assuming that it is from that Indian server network.

LOL.
Don't play over smart here. I know who you are, and you know I am right. Most Indian VPN's use the server location of Mumbai or Delhi. There are no Indian VPN servers that are located in West Bengal. So your Google search would have shown Hindi text instead of Bangla. Learn how to lie well so you don't get caught next time. Even if we both know you are lying. Since you are still at the beginning, I won't bother about it much.

If you continue to lie, I will have to expose your other accounts as well. I know who you are. BTW, why did you just bother to reply to this point and ignore the rest of the points? Please don't play with me. Just be who you are. Do not abuse anything and you are fine.