[ilamont]

Promoted results in Google are loaded with scams. According to one recent report, 75% of brands are affected (https://searchengineland.com/google-search-ads-brands-fraud-...):

The researchers who conducted the report found that retail giants such as Amazon, American Airlines, Lego, Pizza Hut, and Samsung were all victims of identity fraud within Google Search Ads.

Here's a Google SERP for "Facebook" which shows Facebook as the URL, redirects to an Apple security scam: https://youtube.com/shorts/gTEuqXYAp58?si=lzFV9mfX31_8nzd1

Google even vouches for the advertiser:

https://twitter.com/leanmediaorg/status/1724467969344905534/...

[klabb3]

That’s insane, and news worthy. Imagine non-techies just trying to go about their day and getting that.

But hold on a sec. Is this verified by others? The guy in the video cuts to a screenshot, which doesn’t show the resulting url or how he got there, so it’s hard to tell what happened.

[ilamont]

Two versions of the video. This one shows the click: https://youtube.com/shorts/dXZQMkPJkXg?si=hsL8fUirHZj3DMG5

[concinds]

That's still a jump cut, it only pretends to show the click. Dodgy

[morder]

even if it did show the click it's easy enough to edit the page in devtools to go wherever you want

[callalex]

This is about app stores, not web searches. Google Play Store does not suffer from this issue to the same degree at all.

[charcircuit]

>Google even vouches for the advertiser

Google vouches that the advertisers is who is he says he is. Google is not vouching for the reputation if the advertiser.

[habeanf]

It wasn't a promoted result, it's an organic search result, and it's still there!