While no more than four confirmed cases of Ebola have been diagnosed within the United States since September, that hasn't stopped the marketing team at Lysol from getting ahead of the disease. The company's October Ebola-related ad campaign peaked on Tuesday with the revelation that the company bought ad space on Google for any search of the term "Ebola."

Tuesday's Vice Motherboard report confirmed the targeted advertising via a screencap, propped above Google's default result from the CDC. The link, labeled "ad," asked Googlers to "learn the facts about Ebola from Lysol." Clicking on the link took users to the company's October 14 post about the disease. That post opens with a direct link back to the CDC and then recommends that Lysol be used "for surface disinfection in hospital settings to help prevent the spread of the Ebola virus." (The post also clarifies that Lysol's products have "not [been] specifically tested to kill the Ebola virus.")

However, if Lysol visitors don't click through to the CDC's official page on the virus, they won't see some of the most obvious safety recommendations and clarifications, including the rare, specific ways an average, non-hospital worker might contract Ebola—namely, through contact with contaminated fecal and mucus matter. It also doesn't recommend common safeguards like washing hands (even though Lysol happens to sell plenty of hand soap).

Vice's report, which also linked to a National Journal story titled "How the Ebola outbreak is exploited for financial gain," may have turned the company's marketing tide. Attempts to reproduce the Google ad on Wednesday were fruitless; we tried the same search on Bing and Yahoo but came up short on those as well. Even so, as of press time, Lysol's home page still loads with an image of an Ebola virus under a microscope as the default header.

Ars has reached out to Lysol parent company Reckitt Benckiser with questions about the Google ad campaign. We will update this report with any response.