On Saturday morning, for a period of almost an hour, Internet surfers who performed Google searches were unpleasantly surprised to receive erroneous messages that notified that every website offered as a result for a query could be harmful.

Google Incorporated informed that the messages had been the aftermath of a human error and apologized for the inconveniences caused to Internet users and website owners that found their sites labeled as malware.

The issue arose between 9:30 a.m. EST and 10:25 a.m. EST, the company further informed in an explanation it posted on its blog, adding that all who had performed a Google search within that time-frame had received a message saying „This site may harm your computer” alongside every result.

Google stated that it was common practice aimed at protecting users to flag any search results with that message in case the website was known to install malicious software in the background, while it also kept a list of suspicious sites based on criteria drawn up with StopBadware.org, which is a nonprofit project conducted by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities researching consumer complaints.

The problem that occurred on Saturday was the result of Google having applied one of its periodic list updates to all URLs, the company revealed in a statement, adding that the issue was spotted by on-call staff and was rapidly fixed, with the errors having disappeared by 10:25 a.m. EST.

Google said that the duration for any particular user had been of approximately 40 minutes.