Software Jinxed?

[markmac]

I thought NoHandsSEO was going to be one that was different for me.

I've tried a number of software products for backlinks, but they have all ended up with frustration and disappointment.

This started out promising, though.

I set it less aggressive than in the tutorials, and started getting some links and started seeing some movement in the serps.

Then on day 3, the links stopped. They were getting fewer and fewer progressively, btw.

And as I was checking Google to see serp movement, suddenly, Google was in Chinese. I had gotten notices with captchas in Google previously, saying
that my network might be making automated queries. Then it just went Chinese on me.

I was shocked to see that all search engines were in Chinese.

Then every page I tried to get to was in Chinese, but it was a translation. It was a half page of Asian lettering with some English stating
something about cache failure.

They had a fake url, like sichuandycacheapp.com and an email address support@cacheapp.com (I think).

I tried clearing history (including cookies and cache)

I didn't have proxies to enter, but I was using a VPN and would change IP addresses each run I made.

My anti virus software was going off over and over and over and over and over.

I thought it must be normal and as long as I had the anti virus protection (upgraded Avast which has done superbly for me in the past),
I'd be OK.

Well, I wasn't and I"m not.

Now, days later, the computer sometimes goes to some pages, but never to a search engine, and after a while, it quits letting me
go anywhere. Sometimes I get a basic error page that you get when a url doesn't exist, but other times it's the sichuandy chinese page.

When it is working, I never can get anything Google, including youtube. Can't get into my online banking which is probably a good thing, as well as PayPal.

I managed to download malewarebytes but that didn't fix it (found 3 issues)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to wipe my drive and give up automated backlinking myself and pay people to do it for me.

Does anybody have any ideas, or has anyone come across this before?

Thanks

[jimbobo2779]

I genuinely don't want to offend you so please do not take any of what I have to say as meant to be in any way offensive but I think you are confused about a few things that are occurring here and what is causing what.

The reason you are getting websites in Chinese is because your VPN is making your IP address appear to be Chinese so search engines are obviously going to default to the Chinese version, this is very common and is expected. The same would be observed if you were to use proxies from any country, the search engines would default to the location of that IP.

The above is why you are getting pages from weird URLs, because your VPN is redirecting you or rejecting URLs, again not at all related in any way to anything that No Hands SEO could ever do, it does not have any type of functionality to change your windows settings as far as browsers or proxies. All proxy and connection settings are applied to No Hands SEO only, never to windows connection settings like a lot of other SEO software lazily does.

Avast is really not a great AV software and that is why you are getting lots of warnings, No Hands SEO will never ever run any code on any website ever under any circumstance so there is 0 threat of ever getting any kind of virus/Trojan/adware or any other type of malware from running No Hands SEO. Avast is simply polling every webpage that your computer visits and checking them against a list of predetermined domains on a black list to prevent any type of threatening code from being run, however, as stated previously, as none of the code on these websites is ever run this is a needless exercise and serves only to slow down every web request, increase CPU and bandwidth usage and lower link figures without providing a single bit of extra security. These warnings and all of the work done by Avast while NHSEO works are totally superfluous and just add extra overhead and slow things down.

The reason Malware bytes did not find any threats (the 3 it did find were likely just tracking cookies rather than any type of actual threat) is because there likely is no threatening software of any kind on your machine. I trust MWB's opinion far more than I ever would Avast.

The reason you cannot access websites is likely because of 1 of 2 reasons, 1 the UP address from the VPN software is banned on all of these websites due to past abuse (unlikely) or that the VPN software is failing and causing connections to drop, this would make much more sense and would fully explain the low (to nil) link numbers as well as webpages failing. Again none of this is at all related to NHSEO but your VPN software, or a bad proxy being set in your windows connection settings. You can check your windows connection settings by following the windows connection settings guide here, you can follow that to remove any windows proxy that could be set and causing extra issues on top of the others mentioned previously.

I wouldn't advise wiping your machine as the only real issues appear to be your VPN setup, I would get rid of it right away and check your windows connection settings. I have never and would never advise using a VPN with NHSEO or any other SEO tool that involves searching as you are only ever using 1 IP address so it is never really possible to run multiple search threads without getting IPs burnt which results in low to no pages being returned from searches and in turn low to no links being created.

[markmac]

I can't imagine being offended by anything you said, but thanks for bending over backwards to keep that from happening.

You couldn't be more right re my confusion on anything technical in nature. In fact, a lot (maybe most) of what you said went over my head upon first reading and I will now go back and try to digest it and see if I can grok it. I will also check the windows connection.

I will ask one preliminary follow up question though -- and by the way, thanks so much for your detailed response to my first post. And also, know that it is not my intention to frustrate you, if it seems like I didn't read what you wrote.

You said:

The reason you are getting websites in Chinese is because your VPN is making your IP address appear to be Chinese so search engines are obviously going to default to the Chinese version, this is very common and is expected. The same would be observed if you were to use proxies from any country, the search engines would default to the location of that IP.

-----------------

To me, that sounds like you are saying that all the IP address of the VPN I am using are in China. I believe that none of them are. I'm on a different computer at the moment, so i'm going from memory.

I tested many, if not most of them, by logging onto the location and then going to a site that tells you your IP address and the location and they matched up to what the VPN company said, in every instance. For instance, for the Florida setting, the website would tell me I was in Tampa, each of several times I tested it with Florida, but each time was actually with a different Tampa based IP address.

I could go to any search engine, and as long as I was connected to a USA location, I was in their standard US page.

It wasn't until I ran NoHands a few times over a few days that the chinese stuff started happening, or the other not being able to access pages without the chinese happened. And now, even when not using the VPN, I never can access any search engine, and often can't access any web page til I shut down for a while.

By the way, It seemed to me like a better choice to get the various VPNs IPs burnt than my actual IP.

Also, please understand, that even in my confusion, at no time did I ever think that NoHands was sending me to weird URLs. I thought that I was (in the background) visiting each web page the software was posting on, and there must have been some form of malware that my AV did not block. After reading a number of your WF posts, my gut told me that you are not only honest, but extremely good at what you do.

I believed that I was unlucky -- that stuff happens -- and that most people using your product are not unlucky. That's all.

I am pleasantly shocked to hear you say that I could turn off AV and get better results and be just as safe. That is what you said, I think. Yes?

And I think you are saying if I give it another go, to never use my VPN while doing so. Yes?

When you talk about running multiple search threads, is there a setting for that? If it's what I'm thinking, I had it set for 2 or 3 the first day, when I got the best results, and then after that, set it for one.

What can you tell me, (if you will be so generous) about Proxy Goblin? Do you know what settings are best to use with NHSEO? For instance, there is a box to check (or not check) for Google Verification. I think I read something where you said not to expect much from PG, but if I have the best settings (once I discover them), is it better to use those proxies than none at all?

OK, I will check out the windows connection setting guide and hope that it's not so foreign to me that I can't understand it.

Thanks so much. You've really given me hope.

[jimbobo2779]

I am not saying that all IPs were Chinese but it is a likelihood that the reason you were receiving Chinese search engine pages is usually because the IP (or some other location giving criteria, which on a PC is mainly the IP) is from that region. Either way there is absolutely nothing in NHSEO that would change your systems' IP address/proxy settings or any other type of system setting that would affect anything that could cause anything like that to happen. The only things that I can think of that would be able to cause this would be an IP address/VPN, some form of malware or browser toolbar .

You are correct that you can happily run NHSEO without any type of AV software, there is 0 chance of any type of code from a website ever being run on your machine, you obviously though would not be protecte from any webpages that are visited in a web browser while running without an AV.

You can use a VPN to run NHSEO if the IPs are working, there shouldn't be a problem in doing this, just that it isn't really a powerful substitute for running with a bunch of good private proxies. You can run more than 1 search thread by changing the Search Threads setting in Settings=>More tab.

There is a thread on setting up Proxy Harvesting Software with No Hands SEO, it is not specifically for Proxy Goblin but the settings that need to be set are the same across all proxy harvesters so so long as all of them are set you should be able to get proxies to use with No Hands SEO.

[markmac]

Jimbo,

You sir, are a GENIUS!

It was a simple fix to follow the directions to go into internet options in IE and uncheck the enable proxy address box.

Thanks for your help

[jimbobo2779]

No probs.