Why does Google keep showing a CAPTCHA?

Google shows the CAPTCHA — the page that says “Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network” — when the searches arriving from your IP address look automated. It is a judgement about the address, not about you. The usual causes are a browser extension or script searching in the background, a shared connection (VPN, office, school, mobile data) where someone else is sending automated traffic, malware, or simply searching very fast with operators like site:.

It keeps coming back because solving it does not change any of those. The CAPTCHA lets one search through; the traffic that triggered it is still there, so the next search triggers it again.

Cause	How to tell	What fixes it
An extension or script searching for you	Stops in a clean browser profile on the same network	Remove the extension, stop the script
A VPN or proxy	Stops when the VPN is off	Another server, or no VPN for search
A shared network (office, school, café)	Stops on mobile data or at home	Only whoever runs the network
Mobile data that shares one address	Comes and goes, no pattern, not your doing	Nothing reliable — wait, or switch to Wi-Fi
Malware on one device	Other devices on the same network are fine	A malware scan on that device
Your own fast or operator-heavy searching	Starts during a session of site: or inurl: checks	Slow down, or stop doing that job by hand

What Google is actually checking

Google’s help page on the message says it appears when automated queries reach it from your network, and lists the usual sources: a script, a browser plug-in or malicious software sending requests, someone else on a shared connection, or searches that look like a robot’s — advanced operators that scrapers use, sent quickly.

Two things follow from that, and both are worth knowing before you start changing settings.

It is per IP address, not per account. Being signed in to Google does not exempt you, and clearing cookies does not reset it. Everything leaving your network through the same public address is judged together.

It expires by itself. Google says the block lifts shortly after the automated requests stop. If it never lifts, something is still sending them.

The CAPTCHA page prints the IP address it is judging, near the bottom. If that address is not the one your router or phone reports, you are behind a VPN, a proxy or a carrier that shares addresses, and that is the first place to look.

Find the cause in five minutes

Work through these in order. Each one rules out a row of the table.

1. Switch network. Turn Wi-Fi off and search on mobile data, or the other way round. If the CAPTCHA disappears, the cause belongs to the network, not to your computer.
2. Turn off the VPN, if there is one. VPN exit addresses are shared by thousands of people, and some of them are running scrapers. This is the most common cause there is.
3. Open a clean browser profile — a new profile, or a browser you never use, with no extensions. If search works there on the same network, an extension is responsible.
4. Check the other devices. If your laptop gets the CAPTCHA and your phone on the same Wi-Fi does not, the cause is on the laptop: an extension, a script you forgot was running, or malware.
5. Look at what you were doing. Fifty site: searches in twenty minutes is exactly what Google is built to stop, whoever is typing them.

Extensions are the usual suspect

Plenty of extensions query Google without showing you: rank checkers that look up your keywords on every page you open, SERP exporters, “People also ask” scrapers, and some coupon and shopping add-ons. Each lookup is a search from your address. Ten of them a minute is enough.

Removing them one at a time is slow. Disable all of them, confirm the CAPTCHA stops, then turn them back on one by one until it returns.

The part you cannot fix

If the address is shared, there may be nothing you can do from your side.

Mobile carriers commonly put many customers behind one public IP address. So do some home broadband providers. If one of the other people on that address runs a scraper, everyone on it gets the CAPTCHA, and it comes and goes on a schedule you cannot see. Restarting the router helps only if your provider hands out a new address when you reconnect; many do not.

On an office or school network the fix belongs to whoever runs it. Something on that network is sending automated searches, and only they can find which machine.

What will not help

• Solving it faster. It lets the next search through. The cause is still there.
• A “no CAPTCHA” extension. No extension switches Google’s check off. The ones that promise to either pass the puzzle to a paid solving service, which leaves the cause where it was, or send automated traffic of their own, which makes the CAPTCHA more likely, not less.
• Clearing cookies or using incognito. The decision is made on the IP address, and those do not change it.
• A different Google domain. google.co.uk and google.com run the same check.

If the CAPTCHA is coming from your SEO work

This is the case where the honest answer is: you are doing the job with the wrong tool. Checking whether a list of URLs is indexed, or where a site ranks for forty keywords, by typing searches into a browser is exactly the pattern the CAPTCHA exists to stop, and it will keep stopping it.

The alternatives that do not involve typing searches by hand:

• Search Console for your own sites: URL Inspection for indexing, the Performance report for positions. Neither touches the public search page. How to check if a page is indexed compares it with the other methods, and how to check your Google ranking does the same for positions.
• A tool that checks from its own infrastructure for everything else — URLs on sites you do not own, or rankings in another market. The searches are not made from your address, so they cannot get it flagged. Our free index checker works this way for ten URLs, with no account.

For a handful of checks a day, slow down and drop the operators: a plain search for the exact URL answers “is this page indexed” about as well as site: does, and looks like what it is — a person searching.