Problem with Google search of DU? Seems to be resolved

I searched for "god" and then for "pussy", (cats and their darned mind control) and got the same result as you!

First time I've had this problem, it worked earlier today!

Use regular search and add: site:democraticunderground.com

as one of your search terms,. it is the delimiter code.

He self-deleted but had posted a similar error message.

The Google search works fine for me from FF16 on W7. I haven't tried other browsers or operating systems yet (why would I if it works?). Maybe people having the same problem can report what browser/OS they are using to see if there is some common link.

and it would seem strange for a highly used feature like this to suddenly become dependent on a recent browser upgrade.

DU is, I believe, a cluster of servers; I wonder if it's something to do with which server we are each directed to? I presume the search request goes via a DU server, since the results have to be put in a DU frame.

... it is unlikely that it is on your side. I'm in the U.S. Pacific Time Zone, so perhaps it does have something to do with what server DU is coming from for other people. Maybe you could try replacing the www of the web address on the search results page to the alternates (sync, upload, election, betterment, metamorphosis) to see if they work any differently.

As a last resort, people could even go to Google's website.

though when I get the error screen back, it has reset the first section to 'www'.

When I do a successful Google search from DU, the GET request my computer makes to Google is the highlighted part, the lighter text is absent.


It looks like data of the referring page was appended to the request. I have noticed this behavior with Google searches on their website before, perhaps that is what is happening here now causing problems. It also looks like the second part is possibly truncated (the &ad=n9&num=10 part is missing). I always thought that referring page info was just used for tracking how searches related to each other, I wouldn't have thought it would make the actual search data not parse properly.

I'm not sure how that extra info is making it into the request from DU - seems more like a Google issue than a DU one though. It also could be related to which Google servers your request ends up getting routed to - although I can't see any way to influence that.

I don't use the search bar on DU, I always go to Google's site - primarily because I have NoScript blocking javascript from Google so the search results from within DU just shows a blank page.

So until the problem gets fixed, you at least know where to find Google.

I have FireFox set to not send any referrer information. You can change your setting by opening an about:config page and searching for network.http.sendRefererHeader. The default is 2. Changing it to 1 (only send info when clicking on links) or 0 (never send info) should make the Google search work from DU pages.

Whether changing that will mess up how other sites work for you is something you'll have to monitor. You can always set it back if you don't like how it works.

Why the Google search is suddenly acting differently, I don't know. But until it gets resolved, you know an easy workaround.

but the DU frame (that used to give the list of forums and groups down the left, and had been a little out of date - it showed "Help and Meta-Discussion", and, I think, gave the DU tabs and 'my profile' etc. links at the top), has now gone. Which is fine by me, since I didn't often feel the need to go to forums or groups directly from there - I just go to the search results. Whether it's what admin want, I don't know.

... instead of within a frame on a DU "search results" page. Which is nice for me because the frame required some JavaScript from Google (which I have disabled by default) to display results, but the redirect to their site works without JavaScript - that saves me a couple steps when I want to search DU.

it's surrounded by comments saying "TEMP Google Search" (though I admit I hadn't checked that before - I suppose it's possible that it's been 'temp' for months now).

But I guess that would show admin are aware of it, anyway.

for an existing thread on a subject of interest.

Using Chrome on MAC OSX