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Google search goes to wrong website or I get a "content encoding error."

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Whenever I use the Google search engine and click on a site I want to visit, it either goes to the wrong site or I get the following error: Content Encoding Error: The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it is an invalid or unsupported form of compression.

Whenever I use the Google search engine and click on a site I want to visit, it either goes to the wrong site or I get the following error: Content Encoding Error: The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it is an invalid or unsupported form of compression.

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Which security software (firewall) do you have?

Make sure that Firefox has full and unrestricted permission to access internet.

Clear the cache and the cookies from sites that cause problems.

  • "Clear the Cache": Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Offline Storage (Cache): "Clear Now"
  • "Remove the Cookies" from sites causing problems: Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: "Show Cookies"

You can still do a malware check with some more malware scanning programs.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

See also:

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I tried everything mentioned in the post and I'm still having the same problem. I even uninstalled and reinstalled Mozilla. The funny thing is that this problem does not happen when I use Internet Explorer. I prefer Mozilla but I don't know what else to do.