New tools from security firms could be costing you dearly. I observed something “that could not happen” according to the makers of a Link Scanner and Resident Shield packaged with my anti virus product.

It started when I made my first search in Google after the installation. Curiously a new spinny icon appeared beside each entry as the page flowed slowly in to view. Actually that must be emphasised, the page rendering was extremely slow and not at all like the performance usually associated with Google.

I ignored the icons for a while, attempting to use Google in the same way, but two or three searches afterwards I realised this delay, even measured in micro seconds, was frustrating. I took a few minutes to try figure out what the cause was.

And presto! Suddenly on an old search that I had not cleared yet the spinny icons had been replaced with a green star and tick. As I moved my mouse over one of these a dialogue opened with a bunch of information on the link.

I noticed these icons also showed on the adverts. At first I assumed the program searched the display link, which would be no big deal, but I noticed it used the words “This page contains no active threats” and there’s only one way they can find that out.

It occurred to me that if everyone began using these and every link is scanned on every search page Adsense and other ad providers would quickly rackup massive bills for their clients.

It’s also obvious that the ad providers would have to change their terms to allow this kind of action to be taken on their results. It’s not just content theft or hijacking a site but ironically the anti virus developers are using the same technology they are supposed to be protecting you from. As their code only effects the data arriving at your computer you may think this is ok, after all, you decide what happens on your computer right? Wrong! Google are the content owner, not you!

Just because you are using AVG to access and modify the results does not mean paragraph 5.3 can be ignored. Just because Smith and Wessen made the gun doesn’t mean they are guilty of murder.

But if Google have a way to tell whether AVG, McAfee, Norton, Sophos, Panda or one of the many other providers of this software are interrogating Adsense links (and thus not charge for the visit) will every other PPC provider do the same? The short answer is No, one of my projects is responsible for many millions of PPC each day yet no one has approached us and trade journals have barely mentioned it.

So are you paying to much for your PPC advertising?