[userbinator]

That really angers me, and I've tripped it more times than I can count, usually by searching for very specific things. Coworkers have also run into it multiple times (before everyone started working from home, we would exclaim "Fuck you, Google!" and raise a middle finger to the screen, which was a cue to everyone else to help).

The fact that they think you're "not human" when you use a search engine for its intended purpose and show how much you know how to use it is both disturbing and saddening. I wonder if Google's own employees run into it and/or the continuing degradation of results, or if they're somehow given immunity and a much better set of results...

[IggleSniggle]

I’m curious about this. Can you give an example of the kind of query you are talking about where Google assumes you are a bot and not a human?

[bloaf]

I get them all the dang time

Suppose I want to search for a textbook in an open directory. This query will get flagged almost immediately:

    textbook -inurl:htm -inurl:html -inurl:asp intitle:"index of" +(epub|mobi|pdf|txt)

Suppose someone says to me "no one in this forum believes (dumb conspiracy theory from Obama-times)" or "the lamestream media never reported on X." Naturally I will do a few quick iterations of

    conspiracy related "terms" site:someforum.com before:2017-01-01

which will trigger a humanity check if you iterate too quickly.

I got hit recently when the news about Tucker Carlson's racist writer came out. I set out to find the full threads in which the offending comments were made. Iterating through combinations of text, usernames, and urls like

    "full text of offensive post" username before:date-news-broke -inurl:news

got me checked every 3rd search or so.

[uj8efdkjfdshf]

You could always keep Google Chrome open to rerun these specific queries, as the captchas are less irritating to solve then.

[userbinator]

I would sooner switch to DDG, Bing, or Yahoo, or even just change my IP, than use Chrome.

The ban seems to expire after a short time too.