Google users hit with dubious ads: 6 tips for better online searches

Whether you're looking for a local restaurant or researching a sensitive medical advice, most of us turn to search engines, notably Google, every day. 

You might think that using Google is useful and costs you nothing. However, the search giant earns almost $350 billion a year mostly from knowing what you search for online.

You're effectively paying in data to use Google (and any search engine), but our investigation shows that online search is now a messy, inconsistent experience filled with invasive and potentially harmful advertising.

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How ads dominate online search

Google has become the world’s librarian, punching the card of billions of web searches every day, and overseeing searches from the benign to life critical. Despite its importance to us, Google can effectively generate daily fortunes off the back of our data with limited interference. For years this felt like a fair deal as we got a powerful ‘free’ service in return, but our research shows that Google’s lustre has faded as our portal to the online world. And none of its competitors offer an obviously better alternative if you do want to try something different.

Google has around 90% control over the UK search engine market. Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has a tiny 3.94% share. Yahoo Search (1.35%) comes next but most of its search and ads are provided by Bing. The privacy-focused DuckDuckGo (0.56%) is a far distant competitor (it does its own search but Bing provides the ads).

On average, just under a fifth (18%) of results we checked on Google were ads. It was inconsistent, though – some results, such as 'cheap televisions 50 inch', had around 30% of results as ads, but others, such as ‘what are the symptoms of the menopause’, had none. 

Microsoft’s Bing had the highest proportion of advertising – nearly half (47%) of results on average. It had five advertising rates over 60%. More than two thirds of results were marketing on searches for best air fryers and cheap televisions 50 inch. Yahoo had 33% of results we checked as ads, and DuckDuckGo rated at 16%.

There’s nothing wrong with online advertising, but if ads are going rank highly on searches, they have to justify the position. And some in our test were at best unhelpful, at worse potentially harmful. 

From dodgy advice to potential scams

Some ads seen in our testing were bizarrely irrelevant, but others were potentially risky, such as ads plugging whiskey barrel investment opportunities. Others had the potential to at least confuse, including dubious menopause testing kits and drugs. Some could leave you seriously out of pocket, such as suspected scams

• When we searched for the term ‘is my money safe if a firm is FCA regulated’, Bing and DuckDuckGo showed ads for physical safes. And when we typed in ‘how can I earn more on my savings’, Google displayed an ad for a whiskey barrel investment opportunity. These are high-risk schemes that we warned about in 2024.
• When searching ‘do I need a visa for the USA’, all search engines served up ads for private companies offering US visa services. You can get an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) for $21 per person directly from the US government. But applying on a site via Google levied a fee of $119, a 466% mark-up.
• When we searched for a ‘rotating car seat’, most search engines understood we meant for a child. But Yahoo presented an ad for car seats (none rotating) for a Cobra classic car. Other searches brought a Temu link for cushions that spin around on a standard passenger seat. We advise against trying any with your child. 
• If you search ‘can pets take human ibuprofen’, it seems little help to being pestered with ads to buy human painkillers. One site unhelpfully gave the chemical breakdown of Ibuprofen. On a separate search for ‘organic dog food for sensitive stomachs’, Bing flagged a dog boarding service, which seemed to be a little extreme. 
• When searching ‘what are the symptoms of the menopause’, Yahoo allowed ads for dubious home testing kits, and a menopause drugs website with no clear warnings to consult medical advice first. On ‘how often should I take 100 mg of tramadol’, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo had ads for herbal knee patches.

Find out how to avoid dangerous products online with our in-depth guide.

6 tips for better online searches

Whatever you’re searching for, it’s always worth being vigilant about dodgy ads, misleading information and possible scams. 

1. Know how to identify ads: First of all, it's worth checking over a search page on your chosen engine to ensure you know exactly which results are ads. It isn’t always clear, and you could be clicking on links without realising they’ve paid to rank so highly. Yahoo and DuckDuckGo indicate ads with an ‘Ad’ tag. Google uses the term ‘sponsored’. Bing also uses the term ‘sponsored’, but marks with small text in the same grey colour as the description, making it easy to miss if you’re scanning quickly.
2. What’s the source?: Once you’re browsing beyond the ads, consider with all the information you see, who produced it and why. Just because someone has gone to the trouble of making a website doesn’t mean they've passed editorial checks on what they’re presenting. We’ve never had more information at our fingertips, but the cost is misinformation can spread rapidly.
3. Click with caution: When we go online we often forget our natural instincts to sniff out trouble. If someone accosted you in the street and gave a sales pitch, you would no doubt rebuff them quickly. So exert the same level of wariness for anything presented online. This is especially the case with ads, as the publisher has paid to get your attention. 
4. Trust the experts: All search engines try to elevate expert voices, but they're not consistent. Try to seek out legitimate sources of information, such as the NHS. With anything that is less well-known don’t take what’s said solely on its own merit, especially if it’s on a forum or social media site. Always look for at least a few other sources to back up what is claimed.
5. Be careful what you share: You should be able to search the web and protect your privacy. You can adjust your browser settings to lock down data sharing, or use plug-ins, like Ghostery, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials or Privacy Badger on Chrome. Or, shift to a new browser, such as Firefox, Brave or DuckDuckGo, or Safari on Mac/iOS. Our previous research has shown this reduces the amount you’re tracked.
6. Use an ad blocker: Alongside tools for reducing how much data you share, you can block ads entirely. If you want to stick with Chrome, AdBlock, Ghostery or Privacy Badger are useful plug-ins to cut out the advertising you see and make browsing a cleaner experience. Do bear in mind that some websites and services, such as online booking sites, won’t work as easily with ad blockers.

A good antivirus package can offer you extra peace of mind online - see our guide to the best free and paid antivirus software.

Why greater regulation is needed for online search

While AI services such as ChatGPT could revolutionise how we use online search going forwards, the reality is that Google is likely to dominate for many years to come. 

In January, the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) used new powers - campaigned for by Which? - to open an investigation into whether to regulate Google search. Which? Is urging the CMA to intervene in the market and use its new powers to improve competition - essential to driving up standards for consumers and businesses alike.

Rocio Concha, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy, said: 'When we use a search engine like Google, we’re paying for its service with a very valuable commodity: our personal data. In return, consumers should expect to access useful, relevant information - but our research found that all too often the results are plagued with irrelevant and even potentially harmful adverts. 

'Which? campaigned for the CMA to receive new powers to improve competition in key digital markets, and it’s essential it now uses these to intervene in the UK search market. 

'Only with increased competition can we hope to drive up standards across the market and improve the experience for users. As part of this, the CMA should make it easier for consumers to exercise choice over the search engine they use, and allow more control over the collection and use of personal data.'

What the brands told us

We put our findings to the search engines. 

Google told Which? that 80% of Google searches don’t show ads, and it will never serve more than four text ads. It has ‘strict’ policies for what ads can be displayed, including on financial searches, suspected scams and government services. Google says its mission is to serve helpful ads, and said it blocked or removed 5.5bn ads in 2022. In 2024, it removed over 5.1bn ads and restricted over 9.1bn in accordance with its policies, including suspending over 39.2m advertiser accounts for egregious policy violations, and blocking 193.7m for violating financial services policy and 146.9m ads for misrepresentation.

A Microsoft (Bing) spokesperson said: 'We are regularly tuning the experience of Search to improve the authority and credibility of web results, which underpin our responses. Microsoft is not only committed to Search but is leading the charge to radically reimagine what search means. By combining intelligent AI with user-centric design, Microsoft is transforming search from static blue links into easily digestible results tailored to users' specific questions. Search is at the heart of how we interact with the internet, and Microsoft's AI-powered search ensures you get the information you need, faster.'

A DuckDuckGo spokesperson said: 'We constantly work to improve the relevance of our private ads and search results (which we combine from a variety of sources). For example, over the last few weeks we’ve reduced the number of ads that show up for navigational queries, ie when someone is trying to navigate to a website directly and an advertisement gets in the way. But in a landscape where one player has so much scale, Google is able to attract a lot more advertisers than us. We hope the CMA will decisively act to enable competition in the UK search engine market.'

Yahoo declined to provide a statement for publication.

How we tested the search engines

Which? ran 520 online searches, reviewing 5,000 individual results in total from Google, Bing, Yahoo Search and DuckDuckGo. In each case, researchers worked under lab-controlled conditions, and used a default set-up for ‘clean’ results, i.e. not one signed into a Google account or with a browsing history.

All engines were tested on five browser variations - Chrome (PC), Edge, Safari, Chrome (Mac) and Edge (Mac). Researchers selected 20 search questions – half were for products or services like air fryers, cheap TVs and organic dog food. The other half were information searches, such as ‘what is normal for blood pressure’ and ‘how can I earn more on my savings’. Based on industry standard measuring tools, these questions were genuine things people wanted to know, including extremely popular searches, and what’s called ‘long-tail’ searches, which are less popular but still consistently made. 

The latter are much more niche and specialised terms, such as ‘Best price on running shoes for flat feet’ or ‘How often should I take 100 mg of tramadol?’. Researchers then analysed the first 10 search results presented to them including what are called ‘organic’ results (websites shown naturally by the search engines based on an algorithm which dictates the relevance to the original query). 

The results also included ads and other content boxes, such as shopping carousels (sometimes paid advertising), boxes featuring related questions, snippets quoted from websites and also AI overviews. In addition to the core test on PCs and Macs, researchers ran a cutdown test on iOS and Android smartphones involving six questions and analysing eight results on each run.