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One post has brought this site more traffic than anything else ever before. My article on removing Fast Browser Search. That nasty little search re-director that gets installed when you install a Facebook plug in called Web Tattoo.

The story thus far. For some reason I decided to install web tattoo. I knew it was probably going to install something else. Rule #1 – Programs on the internet that claim to be free, especially add-ons for social sites, aren’t really free. I just figured I could uninstall whatever it slipped in. After I uninstalled Web Tattoo, from FireFox and using add and remove programs in the windows control panel, and it was still redirecting my traffic to Fast Browser Search, I’d just remove it with Spybot or Ad-Aware or Hi-Jack This and remove it from the registry. However, none of these detected it and I couldn’t find any sign of it in the registry. Then I did a search on the internet and couldn’t find anything about removing it either. So I did some thinking and figured out how to remove it. Seeing how there was such a lack of articles dealing with this pest, I figured it would be the perfect thing for my blog. So I wrote this article on how I removed it from FireFox .

Next thing I know there’s a spike in the traffic coming to my little unknown blog. I was happy to learn that referrers were search engine results for “fast browser remove” and other similar queries. All of them looking for a way to take out this blasted thing. For a short time, my blog was on the first page in google if you were searching for a way to remove it. This got me pretty jazzed. I’ve had this blog for a couple years but never had much traffic before. After a couple weeks, the traffic to that article I wrote started tapering off. I was no longer in the first page or two when people searched for it. Then all the sudden it spiked again. Turns out someone on a google forum had Fast Browser Search take over their browser. Next thing I know I’m getting a ton of hits again, this time all comming from this post. Now if the people this helped would just click on my google adds, I could earn a couple cents in this tough economy

There was only one problem. My article only covered how to remove it from FireFox. Turns out there are plenty of people with Internet Explorer who have been attacked by this scourge known as Fast Browser Search. So here is what I’m going to do. Initially I was going to install Windows XP on a virtual Machine. But this would take quite some time and work before I could deliberately infect myself with Fast Browser Search. So I decided to take a short cut. After I’m done writing this, I’m going to create a new user account in windows, head over to Facebook and install Web Tattoo while using Internet Explorer. Then I’m going to figure out how to remove it and write part 2 of this article. So check back in a day or so, hopefully it won’t take me longer than that to figure out. If you would like to show some appreciation, click on my google adds, or leave me a reply. I love getting replies and hearing from you.