Why AVG, Mcafee, and Norton are more popular than Avast!

List results for first page when you search antivirus on google:
1st: AVG - free.avg.com
2nd: AVG - free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
3rd: Mcafee - www.mcafee.com/
4th: Norton - www.symantec.com/norton/antivirus
5th: Avast! - www.avast.com/
6th: Kaspersky - www.kaspersky.com/
7th: Trend Micro - us.trendmicro.com/us/home/index.html
8th: ESET - www.eset.com/
9th: BitDefender - www.bitdefender.com/
10th: AVG - www.avg.com/

1st: Bigger advertising buget
2nd: Google tracks clicks and boosts the most hit to the top
3rd: Who cares?

My search results are a bit different… (Google Austria…)

the first three results are paid advertisement:
#1: Kaspersky
#2: Norton
#3: Antivirus Doctor (don’t know this one… when I try to access it, it gets blocked by internet explorer… ::))

from the normal search results here are the first places:
#1: Avira
#2: Avira
#3: Avast!
#4: AVG
#5: Kaspersky
#6: Eset

can anyone tell me if antivirus doctor really is bad software? (the link would be hxxp://www.antivirus-doktor.com/)

yours
onlysomeone

So what, my search results exclude sponsored links and avast is 4th, if you appear on the first page of any search engine results, that is considered good, so 4th or 5th isn’t bad.

you dont see avast running full page ads in popular magazines or coming pre-installed on new computers, just for starters…

AVG have head Offices in US, UK and Netherlands, which classifies them as a multinational. We all know that $$$ has not necessarily led to better AV performance.
Consider that avast are open source with home base outside the main markets.

onlysomeone shows a different picture. We have the same thing here with Yahoo - we have yahoo.com and yahoo.co.nz. But Google has been fiully localised into google.co.nz - this where searching google.com will take you.

Hi YoKenny. Last I recall - a year or so ago - Google was still running their algorithm for rankings returned by search as 50% for paid advertising (that is, 50% head start) and 50% for organic (volumes returned from natural rate of click throughs).

I think they change the algorithm at least monthly to deter the scammers, and they have a big team checking returns from their spider bots anyway. They were once uncrackable but I have heard more recently that they have taken their eye off the ball a bit. Initially - back in their days of “Do no Evil” they prided themselves on the integrity of their returns from organic based. But not for a long time now. When we speak of integrity nowdays, we look to people like Alwil.

Completely agree with this…

Hey hey wait, I want to add something about that Mcafee :expressionless:

(I’m not advertising or what)

My friend is using mcafee for a long time, then It didn’t detect the virus that ruins his pc.
Then the mcafee said that my friend should contact them to know what kind of virus is that =| The problem is, mcafee didn’t detect anything lol

1st: Bigger advertising buget 2nd: Google tracks clicks and boosts the most hit to the top 3rd: Who cares?

Lol at this one. Really right.

Hi, here is an issue that I want to share with you.
I’ve received from my friend his flash usb drive. In my Vista autorun for CD and USB is disabled. I have Avast Home (free version) running. Scanning of usb drive did non detect any virusesm but when I opened removeable drive I found “autorun.exe” hidden file, that was looked like some kind a trojan file. So I sent this file to virustotal, here is a report:

Antivirus Version Last Update Result a-squared 4.0.0.101 2009.06.04 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent!IK AhnLab-V3 5.0.0.2 2009.06.05 - AntiVir 7.9.0.180 2009.06.05 TR/Spy.Agent.asyp Antiy-AVL 2.0.3.1 2009.06.05 Trojan/Win32.Agent Authentium 5.1.2.4 2009.06.05 - Avast 4.8.1335.0 2009.06.05 - AVG 8.5.0.339 2009.06.05 SHeur2.AHSY BitDefender 7.2 2009.06.06 - CAT-QuickHeal 10.00 2009.06.05 TrojanSpy.Agent.asyp ClamAV 0.94.1 2009.06.06 - Comodo 1269 2009.06.06 - DrWeb 5.0.0.12182 2009.06.06 Win32.HLLW.Autoruner.6326 eSafe 7.0.17.0 2009.06.04 Suspicious File eTrust-Vet 31.6.6542 2009.06.05 - F-Prot 4.4.4.56 2009.06.05 - F-Secure 8.0.14470.0 2009.06.05 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent.asyp Fortinet 3.117.0.0 2009.06.06 W32/Agent.ASYP!tr GData 19 2009.06.06 - Ikarus T3.1.1.59.0 2009.06.06 - K7AntiVirus 7.10.754 2009.06.04 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent.asyp Kaspersky 7.0.0.125 2009.06.06 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent.asyp McAfee 5637 2009.06.05 - McAfee+Artemis 5637 2009.06.05 Artemis!466239B05F5B McAfee-GW-Edition 6.7.6 2009.06.05 Trojan.Spy.Agent.asyp Microsoft 1.4701 2009.06.05 TrojanDropper:Win32/Emold.C NOD32 4134 2009.06.05 a variant of Win32/Kryptik.RT Norman 6.01.09 2009.06.05 - nProtect 2009.1.8.0 2009.06.06 Trojan-Spy/W32.Agent.41984.C Panda 10.0.0.14 2009.06.05 Trj/CI.A PCTools 4.4.2.0 2009.06.05 - Prevx 3.0 2009.06.06 Medium Risk Malware Rising 21.32.50.00 2009.06.06 Packer.Win32.UnkPacker.a [Suspicious] Sophos 4.42.0 2009.06.06 - Sunbelt 3.2.1858.2 2009.06.06 - Symantec 1.4.4.12 2009.06.06 Suspicious.MH690.A TheHacker 6.3.4.3.340 2009.06.05 Trojan/Spy.Agent.asyp TrendMicro 8.950.0.1092 2009.06.05 - VBA32 3.12.10.6 2009.06.06 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent.asyp ViRobot 2009.6.5.1771 2009.06.05 - VirusBuster 4.6.5.0 2009.06.05 - Additional information File size: 41984 bytes MD5...: 466239b05f5bde21cdc210c4fb8ce034
As you can see, Kasperski, NOD, Symantec, AVG are detected that trojan, but Avast not :(

If i search for term “antivirus” in Google, i get the following order:
free.avg.com
free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
www.free-av.com
www.avast.com
www.nod32-si.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software
antivirus.comodo.com
www.internetling.com/2008/03/09/anti-virus-software-is-dead-use-linux
trendmicro.com
www.clamav.net

These results are from the first page. Although i’ll never understand whats so awesome on AVG to be so popular. Free version has crappy features and annoying banner thats constantly popping out of the interface. On the other hand i can’t blame AVIRA to be third…
No McAfee or Norton. Only world wide well known one is Trend Micro way down at the bottom.

-= Just noticed that the popular free antiviruses begins with an “A”… Avast, AVG, Avira, A-squared… :wink:

That may well be the case but searches aren’t listed in alphabetic order.

Send the sample to virus@avast.com zipped and password protected with the password in email body, a link to this topic might help and undetected malware in the subject.

Or you can also add the file to the User Files (File, Add) section of the avast chest (if it isn’t already there) where it can do no harm and send it from there. A copy of the file/s will remain in the original location, so you will need to take further action and can remove/rename that.

Send it from the User Files section of the chest (select the file, right click, email to Alwil Software). It will be uploaded (not actually emailed) to avast when the next avast auto (or manual) update is done.

Antivirus doctor has been listed as a possible rogue program. You may want to research a bit further if you wish. I would follow avast blocking this website and not be inclined to visit it. Be careful out there.

This may be OT… but

David… how do you exclude sponsored links in Google searches? Inquiring minds would like to know. I never click on a sponsored link and would prefer not to even see them listed.

Thanks.

I use the firefox add-on CustomizeGoogle and that has many customizations. I can’t recall exactly which of the literally hundreds of options it is, possibly the Remove ads bit in the Web tab and a number of other Tabs.

Thanks David.

Anyway, even if avast!'s position is last^^

Ill still be using it no matter wat happens…Im with Avast! till the last breath of my PC!!^^lol^^

-AnimeLover^^

You’re welcome.