
Show HN: A Firefox add-on to strip Google search results of 'blacklisted' URLs - davehcker
https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper
======
myfonj
Anybody else here remembers times when Google search supported blocking
domains in personal setting? Along with so many advanced search operators? Oh,
days of yore…

Anyway, you can still use prevailing `site:` operator with "minus" negation
(e.g.[1]) , so you can have bookmarked search with your custom blocklist in
query [2]

[1] no SO and no w3schools example, non-personalized ("verabatim"):
[https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+merge+arrays+javascri...](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+merge+arrays+javascript+-site:stackoverflow.com+-site:w3schools.com&tbs=li:1)
[2] place `%s` into query and set bookmark keyword (Firefox) or
chrome://settings/searchEngines - Add:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site:stackoverflow.com+-...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site:stackoverflow.com+-site:w3schools.com&tbs=li:1)

~~~
Normille
I use Tampermonkey[1] with the "Google Hit Hider by Domain"[2] plugin to de-
crapify my search results.

In spite of the name, it works on all search engine sites I've tried it on;
Google, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Qwant. It adds a "Block" button beside each
search result which allows you to block sites from appearing in that
particular search result. Or to 'perma-ban' them from ever showing in future
search results.

No affiliation. Just a satisfied customer.

[1] [https://www.tampermonkey.net](https://www.tampermonkey.net)

[2] [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-
by-d...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain-
search-filter-block-sites)

Unfortunately it can't do anything about search results returning precisely
the opposite of what you searched for; eg.

SEARCH: "How to completely uninstall XXX from YYY"

RESULT: "How to install XXX on ZZZ"

SEARCH: "How to completely +uninstall -install +XXX +from -on +YYY -ZZZ

RESULT: "Install YYY on ZZZ with this howto"

[Insert sound of computer being thrown across room]

And, while I'm on the subject, my tuppence worth for the list. Fucking You-
fucking-Tube being returned as the first dozen search results for some crappy
one liner which you've forgotten and need to look up quickly...

SEARCH: "cheatsheet keyboard shortcut for function Z in app Y"

WHAT I WANT THE SEARCH TO RETURN: "App Y Keyboard shortcut cheatsheet"

WHAT THE SEARCH ACTUALLY RETURNS: [almost an entire page of] "Take zen ninja
mastery of Application Y in minutes by learning this arse-sum keyboard
shortcut!" \--a 45 minute unedited epic, filmed by a monosyllabic arsehole on
a shaking, continually auto-focussing phone camera, orientated vertically.
Featuring 20 minutes of "er... um... well..." mumbling at the beginning,
telling the viewer how "arse-sum" this keyboard shortcut is going to be --if
the fucker ever gets around to actually showing you it!

Followed by the actual clicking of the shortcut which the narrator manages to
do while the camera is pointed at the wrong part of the screen and out of
focus.

~~~
user764743
Good suggestion, although I would propose to use FireMonkey instead of
Tempermonkey/Violentmonkey as the former is more lightweight and privacy
friendly than the latter.

If you are interested, here's an article:
[https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/10/firemonkey-uses-
firefoxs-o...](https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/10/firemonkey-uses-firefoxs-
official-api-for-userscripts-and-userstyles/)

~~~
Normille
I use Yandex Browser [Chromium-based] so, unfortunately, FireMonkey isn't an
option.

The article you linked to is quite vague as to what the security implications
might be. It says that FireMonkey extensions run in a sandbox. But you're
still being asked the usual "This extension wants to see and modify your data
on all websites.." [or whatever the exact wording is]. So, you're still
letting the installed scripts have access to your browsing.

One good thing about <whatever>Monkey and userscripts is that they make it
trivially easy to inspect the scripts and see what exactly is being done.
Whereas a browser extension is more of a 'black box'. So, there is more
potential to spot potentially nefarious code in a userscript.js.

------
davehcker
I wrote this because I was so annoyed by irrelevant low-quality search results
for my queries on Google. For instance if I'm looking up for Python xyz topic,
99% of the times I am not interested in some 'low-quality' content (based on
my personal preferences) from website example.com.

The plugin maintains a persistent and customizable list of URLs (keywords)
that are used as a 'blacklist' for stripping results.

~~~
saagarjha
Name and shame: my personal ones are cplusplus.com and w3schools.com.

~~~
ajsnigrutin
Fucking quora!

For image search, fucking pinterest!

~~~
smcameron
When I worked for google as SRE for the web crawler, I low key advocated for
de-indexing pinterest, but didn't get anywhere, (this is unsurprising, I was a
nobody there.) I have no insight into why they don't de-index pinterest, but I
know pinterest was on the radar as a thing of some sort. Meantime, I just add
"-site:pinterest.*" to image queries... which I gather is probably more or
less the sort of thing this addon does.

~~~
Ayesh
You don't have to answer this if you don't feel like it, but I always wondered
if "-site:food.bar" is a search signal against that web site when Google ranks
domains.

------
zargon
This used to be built-in to google itself. You could choose to block a site
from future results from any results page. But they killed it, along with
forum search, code search, usenet search, and so many other useful things.

~~~
hackissimo123
Yes, my first thought upon reading the post was "doesn't Google already offer
this?" Didn't realise they'd killed it.

I use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine these days and I'm actually
reasonably happy with it. The results used to be laughably bad but they've
really improved lately.

Sadly, the _one_ thing where DDG is usually crap is for anything code-related,
especially if I'm searching for something very specific like an error message
or an obscure library. That's when I have to jump back to Google (well,
actually Startpage.)

~~~
_0ffh
Regarding DDG, I have noticed that recently it has started to suggest a ton of
porn, even for totally unrelated searches.

As an experiment I just typed in the first thing that came to my mind: "thorn
in cat's paw". One of the results is "Cat porn videos", on the very first
page! And this is far from the worst case I've encountered...

~~~
clarry
Did you turn off safe search? I don't get porn with these search terms. Unless
I turn off the porn filter.

~~~
_0ffh
As I do not know, what DDG subsumes under "objectionable material" (apart from
it being "mostly adult"), yes. It was never a problem until recently, some
sites seem to have stepped up their SEO game.

------
dkthehuman
Chrome users: uBlacklist is fantastic. (It also has a Firefox version.)
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe/related?hl=en)

It's also one of the best extensions I've seen in terms of code quality:
[https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist](https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist)

~~~
shpx
uBlacklist can also filter results on Duck Duck Go and Startpage (it's in
settings if you go to chrome://extensions/ find uBlacklist, click on it,
scroll to the bottom and click "Extension options"), but I've never tried it.

~~~
gxnxcxcx
Confirmed working on DDG (text search only) and Startpage (both text and
images), tested on Firefox.

------
nabakin
This is a great idea! I don't know why I hadn't thought of it beforehand! I
looked through your code and it looks like you replace the HTML of the page.
Have you considered appending "-site:<blacklisted url> -site:<blacklisted
url>...etc" to the end of the search query instead? This way, the user still
gets a full page of relevant search results.

I'm not sure how flexible extensions are, but maybe you could intercept all
request attempts to google search, append the blacklisted URLs to the search
query, then hide them on the loaded page so that the user doesn't have to see
the long list of appended, blacklisted URLs.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _" -site:<blacklisted url> -site:<blacklisted url>...etc"_

I actually have a keyworded URL in my Firefox bookmarks for that, IIRC there
is a limit (a very low one if you really want to get rid of all the spam
options) for how many sites you can block this way

~~~
dorgo
only 32 words/parts are allowed in a query.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=test+-site%3Aa1.com+-site%3A...](https://www.google.com/search?q=test+-site%3Aa1.com+-site%3Aa2.com+-site%3Aa3.com+-site%3Aa4.com+-site%3Aa5.com+-site%3Aa6.com+-site%3Aa7.com+-site%3Aa8.com+-site%3Aa9.com+-site%3Aa10.com+-site%3Aa11.com+-site%3Aa12.com+-site%3Aa13.com+-site%3Aa14.com+-site%3Aa15.com+-site%3Aa16.com+-site%3Aa17.com+-site%3Aa18.com+-site%3Aa19.com+-site%3Aa20.com+-site%3Aa21.com+-site%3Aa22.com+-site%3Aa23.com+-site%3Aa24.com+-site%3Aa25.com+-site%3Aa26.com+-site%3Aa27.com+-site%3Aa28.com+-site%3Aa29.com+-site%3Aa30.com+-site%3Aa31.com+-site%3Aa32.com+-site%3Aa33.com)

------
joshspankit
Honestly, at this point Google themselves should be offering this.

Not only would it keep people coming back for actually valuable results, but
it would feed them with an up-to-the minute listing of sites people don’t
trust.

~~~
Meekro
Even better, let people subscribe to block lists, like ad blockers do. Instead
of putting together my own list of shit sites (which will be perpetually out
of date), I'd be happy to outsource that to some group I trust.

~~~
davehcker
It's an enhancement issue I've already added to the repository on Github.
Planning to roll it out in the next update :) Honestly, I didn't know how big
of a pain it was to a lot of people until now.

------
Nightshaxx
As someone who just graduated college and found geeksforgeeks,
cplusplusreference, and w3schools quite helpful for Algorithms, c++ Syntax,
and learning some basic web design stuff (respectively).....what should I be
using? I see a lot of people hating on them....but they all seemed alright to
me. Is it just because they are too basic? (I used a lot of these things for
just learning basic things I either forgot the syntax for or needed a quick
introduction).

I'd especially like to know for c++.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
The complaints about these sites is usually that (a) they're literally wrong
just often enough that you don't want to rely on them, which defeats the point
of a reference, or (b) they try to "teach" things that are not recommended
best practices. With w3schools in particular, there's the added "ick" that
they try very hard to make it look like they're an offical W3C source, and
sell scammy certifications based on that confusion. They also provided (past
tense, because I haven't looked at it in years) some very questionable
practices with PHP that would lead to trivially insecure code.

cppreference.com is what I usually use for C++. It's well organized, well
cross-linked, and uses exact standards language whenever possible. It's also
very good about showing the differences between successive versions of the C++
standard libraries, which is invaluable if you're working with any sort of
legacy code and wondering why something looks funny.

For HTML5/JS, MDN (Mozilla) was my default when I did front-end, but it's been
a little while. I'm sure Mozilla is still great, but there might also be
something easier to traverse.

~~~
Nightshaxx
Ahhhh.....you know what, now that I think about it, I remember last semester
for a class I had to do a bunch of PHP + SQL for a Backend (my first time
really using either). I basically just googled a bunch of stuff and I ended up
just writing the queries in as strings basically because that's what I saw on
a site (very possibly one of the ones in question).

I felt it was wrong because I was concerned about SQL injection, but my
professor really didn't care about security so I wasn't too too concerned.
Later on my professor mentioned that pre-compiled statements (I think that's
what they are called) and I facepalmed because that would have been way more
secure and been 5x easier anyways.

So yea, I guess they still are giving bad advice.

------
jaimex2
Google used to offer this as a feature in search itself ages ago.

It ended up being removed from the core product and replaced by an extension
which they abandoned.

It's currently community maintained:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-
blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklistnot-
by/cbbbhelcpfjhdcncigdlkabmjbgokmpg)

------
wccrawford
This should already have been part of Google itself. Some sites come up high
far too frequently for certain searches of mine, and it's never the best info.

I like that this doesn't completely blow away the result, but I do kind of
wish is was further de-emphasized. Maybe smaller font or faded text.

~~~
DrJokepu
This was actually a Google feature maybe about a decade ago. It was removed at
some point.

~~~
riyadparvez
Yes, it was a part of Google search. I guess they removed it because not many
people were using it. Too bad I was a big fan of this feature.

~~~
hdctambien
Or because too many people were using it!

------
beloch
Goodbye Pinterest!

~~~
bobbyz
Goodbye Forbes!

~~~
jonahhorowitz
Goodbye Amazon!

~~~
zentiggr
Goodbye Quora, experts-exchamge, and a bazillion random string name sites.

------
scraft
The two issues I have with Google search recent: first, I often get results,
when searching for something technical which look like they have huge
potential, a sentence with my search terms in, amongst a technical looking
paragraph, with a URL, at first glance, that looks good, I click on it and it
attempts to take over the browser with spam, redirects etc, I then realize the
domain had random characters before the end, but I wonder how such terrible
results end up on Google. I want to ban these sites from my searches.
Secondly, unrelated to this extension, recently, Google have started popping
up a box with other search terms I may be interested in, just after the search
loads, within the search results, and the amount of times I have gone to
click, only to be last minute intercepted by a link in this box which suddenly
appears is unreal. Anyone else get that?

~~~
_puk
To your second point, yes, all the time and it's infuriating. You either need
to slow down how you use the search results page, or they appear from nowhere
just as you're trying to click the second link.

What's worse is I then berate myself mentally as I know that Google has some
metric on how many times these suggestions get clicked, and there's some
product owner somewhere saying "wow!, x% of users use these suggestions, let's
keep this feature!"

------
mancerayder
This might be useful to blacklist some of the shopping results when you want
facts and not shopping results. Sometimes I google "how does X work" type
questions, and I get pages of links of things I should buy. The top stuff are
obvious ads, but the non-ad results are basically shopping sites, too. That's
mean of Google. They're our main source of information ("How does X work") and
instead they want to redirect you to shopping because .. they can.

I notice -shopping helps... magically. But not enough.

Maybe the blacklist is the right idea. Can there be a magic incantation to
exclude or include groups of blacklisted sites on a whim?

~~~
davehcker
I'll take this into account too towards my attempt in making it more
customizable.

------
calmchaos
Check out also SearchMage - it can filter search results for several search
engines and provides some extra functionality as well:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchmage-
se...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchmage-search-
enhancer/)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchmage/oldjnha...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchmage/oldjnhaegfgpfjlpmedeehapghiodglc?hl=en)

------
wanderingstan
Great work! I actually made something similar 15 years ago with a P2P social
networking angle: You could hide/promote results based on your friends'
reccomendations.

Check out some old screenshots from Firefox version 1.0:
[http://getoutfoxed.com/screenshots](http://getoutfoxed.com/screenshots)

It went viral on del.icio.us and let to me taking venture funding to found
www.lijit.com, which lives on now as [http://sovrn.com/](http://sovrn.com/)

~~~
davehcker
This is very inspirational! Actually I have something similar in mind- 1. to
allow subscribing to friend's or network's lists. and/or 2. Make it a 'window'
to your search experience. So it's privacy focused personal/social logic that
offers you Google or any search engine that way you prefer. I think PageRank
is not enough (or may be too much) for me...

------
Donkeykong1111
Good bye corporate news from my search results! I am so fed up with a bunch of
news articles always crowding out the top results for nearly every search
query. No more having to wade though propaganda soup to find the things i
want.

~~~
Macuyiko
This extension comes at a good time. Just a couple of weeks ago I was
wondering how search would feel if you'd remove all news sites (mainstream and
otherwise).

------
dvduval
I would so love to have a search engine setting in which I could remove the
top 500 web properties from my search, or have similar parameters to help
remove large swaths information that I'm not interested in looking at.

~~~
LiveTheDream
[https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/) can do this

------
tannhaeuser
We really should bring back OpenSearch which is/was a way for sites to expose
a search URL to browsers (like RSS URLs). You'd then directly query those
sites rather than going to the middleman (Google or other search engines).
Only that sites exposing OpenSearch URLs probably aren't prepared to be
queried by meta crawlers and huge query loads will bring them down rather
quickly I guess. The quality of search results on both Google and alternatives
is shockingly poor; I can't find documents I used to find only three years
ago. I, too, wonder if Google has just lost interest in fighting SEO spam. But
I find it hard to believe that they aren't all over their cash cow so I have
to conclude they send you to the sites with the most AdWords and Google
analytics crap on purpose. At which point Google's search results can be used
as a pretty good negative filter I guess ;) Interesting times ahead for search
engines.

~~~
myfonj
Site search provided by author seems like the best option on the first glance,
but sadly in my experience those in-house full-text searches are most of the
times way inferior than simple `site:` limited google search. If not in
relevance then in speed -- I think it is understandable, one could hardly
compete with Google in this field.

Two genuine anecdotal experiences: \- MDN search used to be super slow, and to
this days its results page is not super nice and still slower than Google:

In-site: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/search?q=mutationObserve...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/search?q=mutationObserver) Google scoped:
[https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=mutationObserver%...](https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=mutationObserver%20site:developer.mozilla.org)

\- jQuery API docs search felt the same: slow and slightly confusing compared
to GSERP. (Much better now with Algolia, but still prefer Google:

In-site: [https://api.jquery.com/?s=off](https://api.jquery.com/?s=off) Google
scoped:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=off%20site:api.jquery.com](https://www.google.com/search?q=off%20site:api.jquery.com)

------
altano
I would love this but unfortunately this permissions request is too broad:
[https://files.terriblefish.com/2020-05-24_17-27-15.png](https://files.terriblefish.com/2020-05-24_17-27-15.png)

The Firefox UI won't let me see what the other 195 domains are.

~~~
aclimatt
They are all localized Google domains.

[https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper/blob/master/manifest.jso...](https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper/blob/master/manifest.json)

EDIT: Even better, they're also listed right on the extension's page:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/wiper/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/wiper/)

Left side, "Permissions" (click to view all)

~~~
altano
Perfect, thanks!

------
lwkl
Thank you! I was searching for an add-on like this a few months ago. When I
search for tech support issues I get a lot of SEO spam blogs that have no
useful information now I can finally filter them out.

------
cft
Please make one for Bing. I gave up on Google search about half a year ago
initially for all searches that could yield politically incorrect results, but
then for all technical searches as well due to these spammy sites. Bing
technical search is definitely higher quality and the general results are more
politically neutral, but it still needs your extension. I currently find
Firefox/Bing to be the most effective combination.

~~~
davehcker
I never personally used Bing much (but memes have told me the same about its
search quality). I will take into consideration for the next execution.

I have been also mildly pissed at Youtube results and given how permeated it
is into a 'learner's' life, I have been thinking about Youtube too. But in
that case I'll have to take more usability into account to allow for right-
click>add_to_blacklist kind of thing since there are so many low-quality ad-
loaded channels.

~~~
tester756
I think Bing is better than Google when it comes to NSFW stuff (friend told
me) and probably Image Search

------
Donkeykong1111
It seems kinda ridiculous that such a obvious and extremely useful idea hadn't
been made yet, I cant wait to use it!

Bravo! Thanks so much or developing this.

------
rkagerer
Any reason you chose to do this as a Firefox plugin rather than a Greasemonkey
(or similar) script? Not judging, just wondering.

~~~
davehcker
1\. My hatred for Chrome (kind of recent HN influence) led me into Firefox
first and foremost hence Firefox. Even though I'll be porting it to
Chrom(ium-e) soon. 2\. It could be my attitude but I thought writing ground up
vanilla would be much easier than learning a new tool, i.e., I know
Greasemonkey only as much as in its name and nothing else about its workflow.
2.1 I guess an addon is easier to distribute/install (?).

------
arkitaip
Google search filter is an alternative that has been around for quite some
time and has some additional features: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/g-search-filt...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/g-search-filter/)

~~~
zaat
This does look interesting, but it requires much more permissions and
personally I hesitate to grant those for any non-monitored extension.

------
adtac
you might as well preload this with Pinterest, that is precisely what I and
most people will be using this ext for

------
kgwxd
I got sick of seeing links to sites I knew I never wanted to visit (or
couldn't due to pay/sign-up walls) and accidentally clicking them, so I made
something similar to this for myself, but it applies to all sites.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/ssure/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/ssure/)

[1] [https://github.com/7w0/ssure](https://github.com/7w0/ssure)

It's terrible to configure because it was only intended for personal use. The
only reason it's in the add-on repository at all is the annoying fact you
can't reasonably use a locally installed add-on.

------
blackboxlogic
Wow... that was fast:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/gorbw9/featurer...](https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/gorbw9/featurerequest_userspecific_searchresults/)

------
nyolfen
i use search keywords for everything, but i have the following custom keyword
for google image search (this is firefox, though i believe it works for chrome
too if you create one and manually edit it):

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=-pinterest.com...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=-pinterest.com+-youtube.com+%s)

it strips out all results from pinterest and youtube thumbnails. though with
the lack of direct image links i've been leaning more on ddg and bing these
days.

------
djray
Coincidentally, I have been working on a similar Chrome/Opera extension.

It works for Google, Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo and a few others, but I haven't
finished it or packaged it up to submit to Google yet. Some rough edges and
lots of TODOs still.

Anyway, it's here if anyone is interested in the code or would like to
collaborate:
[https://github.com/daverayment/SearchHide](https://github.com/daverayment/SearchHide)

------
atrudeau
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search-
filt...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search-filter/)

Similar, but also enables highlighting of certain domains.

Also available on Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-
search-filt...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search-
filter/eidhkmnbiahhgbgpjpiimdogfidfikgf)

------
skilled
First thing that came to my mind, is this the next-gen ad blocking?

Interesting project and I think I am on board with it. Google search results
have declined a lot in the last 2 years, mostly because of oversaturation by
brands that have been playing the SEO game for years.

It's getting increasingly harder to land on pages that have been written by
someone without a strict interest in search engine traffic.

------
polymorph1sm
Thank you! Just curious, is there any reason why "Wiper blacklisted URL:
<URL>" need to be shown instead of a cleaner removal?

~~~
davehcker
You mean why not fully remove the URL? That's just in the odd case you really
do want to visit the link (after Google think that it's a good result). May be
example.com happens to be the ONLY website that does have some good content, I
personally wouldn't want to ban it entirely. But in every case, I'd like to
strip their results so I won't have to scroll down to get to the good results.

------
brainlessdev
It looks great. I created an extension with a similar purpose. It adds a
confirmation step when you click on blacklisted links, and prepends an angry
emoji on blocked text links.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/nay/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nay/)

------
lukaa
I wonder is there extension that would do exactly opposite, only include
google results from sites that i choose in order that i want.

~~~
davehcker
Ordering is something that I'm not sure about (but I've myself been thinking
about it for a future addon- if not the current one) that would 'weigh' the
URLs like .edu/wikipedia etc. much higher. Would such a feature be helpful to
you? And as a part of the same addon?

As for only results from specific websites, you may use Google Operators (like
inurl, site, etc.)

------
wnevets
At one point google had this as a chrome extension and as a built in feature
to the search itself. Both are now dead for some reason

------
justnotworthit
Been using [https://github.com/wildskyf/personal-
blocklist](https://github.com/wildskyf/personal-blocklist) Got tired of most
top results being from different pinterest.xzy domains. And when searching
motorcycle prices and specs, I'd always get Indian websites.

------
bArray
I like the idea, although I personally won't be using it, I really like that
it exists.

From a "freedom" perspective, I think individuals are free to impose their own
filters but generally the default should be unrestricted access. That would
possibly be with the caveat of the provably vulnerable (children, mental
disabilities, etc).

Keep up the good work!

------
modzu
for those who dont know about native search filters, appending "-domain.tld"
to a regular search query also works

~~~
SquareWheel
You can also create a custom browser search command with this. Pass it into
your search engine of choice.

------
fillskills
This is absolutely fantastic. Similarly frustrated with sites gaming SEO with
near rubbish results or bare minimum content.

------
nishnik
I created an add-on which replaces !s with inurl:stackoverflow.com to
replicate the bangs of duckduckgo in Google.

~~~
chipperyman573
How come not site:stackoverflow.com? Is this just a different way of doing the
same thing? I've never heard of the inurl: flag

~~~
nabakin
inurl filters so that the result URLs must contain the keyword specified. So
inurl:w3 would only show results where w3 is in the URL. It works for this use
case but it's better to just use site like you mentioned.

~~~
thejynxed
You can't even fully rely on those operatorsike site: anymore because Google
now happily serves you results from miscreants that tag their scam site urls
with valid site names, so instead of getting results from only let's say
mozilla.org, you also now get them from their scamsite because they appended
the actual mozilla site url into their own.

~~~
nabakin
Are you sure that happens with site and not inurl? That's a big bug. Do you
have an example?

------
ravenstine
Would be nice if there was a DDG version.

~~~
GraemeL
I've been using this userscript since Google dropped the ability to block
results years ago. It works across a bunch of search engines.

[https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-
by-d...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain-
search-filter-block-sites)

~~~
Normille
Me too. It's been great

I've also cobbled together a Tampermonkey script which I wittily call
"HackerChoose" which allows me to similarly block domains from appearing on
HN. Unfortunately my JS-foo isn't up to making it interactive, so I have to
manually update the list of banned domains. But, if anyone's interested, here
it is:

This actual Tampermonkey stub script imports the full userscript from a
location elsewhere on my hard drive. This makes it easier to maintain the list
of banned domains by editing that imported file directly, rather than having
to make edits from within Tampermonkey's clunky interface:

[https://pastebin.com/raMSWMDi](https://pastebin.com/raMSWMDi)

This is the imported userscript. I pretty much lifted it from one someone else
had made and then twiddled it a bit. So apologies to whoever the original
author was, but I've forgotten where I got it, so can't give you the credit:

[https://pastebin.com/SbtfXEby](https://pastebin.com/SbtfXEby)

------
llacb47
You can also do this with uBlock Origin.

~~~
shbooms
I don't believe you can accomplish precisely what this does with uBO. You can
blacklist your browser itself from connecting to certain domains with uBO but
you can't fully remove them from within a google search results page since the
google results page isn't explicitly connecting to the domains, just
displaying links to do so.

Even with some advanced cosmetic rules the most you could do is remove the <a>
tag fields, not the full title/text of the results.

~~~
pythux
If you can select the <a> tag, then you can likely use a procedural cosmetic
filter to go up the DOM like with :upward(n). So this should be possible.

------
sub7
Google search sucks so hard these days. Absurdly shitty.

Needs to be unfucked via antitrust IMO they have lost their way.

~~~
ghostpepper
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if a legitimate competitor emerged? It's
not like antitrust legislation significantly raised the quality of Microsoft's
software in the 90s.

------
zebnyc
Sorry to hijack this thread but does anyone know of any extension that blocks
/ strips certain kinds of content.

Use case: I am as guilty of mindless browsing as the next person but seeing
news / click-bait headlines about certain celebs like the kardashians makes my
blood boil.

~~~
TheCapeGreek
uBlock Origin has custom filters you can use. I'm guilty of the exact same
thing (just not the same sites). Here's a sample of what I use:

    
    
      ||youtube.com/|$document,xhr
      ||youtube.com/?pbj*|$document,xhr
    

The first blocks YT entirely. The second blocks URL loads (if you load the URL
directly) AND SPA redirects. I mostly use these to use YT only for content I
subscribe to and avoid the algorithms by impulse or accident. Note that not
all SPAs work the same, so you'd have to do some digging. For example, 9Gag
doesn't redirect from the same API endpoint but instead uses payload data, so
it's more difficult to block that. You can still block direct pageloads, but
not SPA redirects, so for sites like that you may want to just block the
entire domain.

I have a small list of content I try to avoid using this, mostly Reddit subs
and "main" pages like r/all or r/popular. With this in mind, my ideal YT &
reddit feeds are only content I explicitly want to see.

Else, I'd recommend a feed curator like Feedly. You can set up custom site
feeds and so you'll only see those. I started using it after Firefox killed
its RSS. This way there's no algorithm except popularity of a given link from
a feed, not what is on the feed at all. So the onus of balance is still on
you, but way easier.

------
truebosko
I love this! Semi-related, I was just fiddling with a Firefox extension this
morning to flip Python 2 documentation results with those of Python 3 (usually
also in the results, but lower on the page)

------
CWuestefeld
Maybe it's just me, but I don't get what this is doing. How did the Google
search results get inside some other URL?

I tried to watch the animation to understand, but it's too low resolution for
me to read.

~~~
davehcker
It basically lets you create a list of blacklisted URLs and then any Google
search results that matches against these URLs is stripped to the bare URL
alone. The screenshot on the Firefox Addons page is of a much better quality.

------
jon_black
I've been using
[https://github.com/pistom/hohser](https://github.com/pistom/hohser) for some
time and it works well.

------
ciarannolan
Sorry to be a pedant here, but I think a title of "Show HN: A Firefox add-on
to strip Google search results _of_ 'blacklisted' URLs" is much more clear.

~~~
davehcker
Thanks; I fixed it.

------
XorNot
Don't think I've ever wanted to install an extension so fast. There are so, so
many domains that I am content to literally never see in search results...

------
Luc
Doesn't work in Google Image Search :(

Anyone here work at Pinterest?

~~~
epanchin
Blocking Pinterest results in image search was my first thought with this
extension. That’s disappointing if it doesn’t, will test myself now.

------
dehrmann
So long, w3schools.

------
andrewash
Google has a similar built-in feature today, just add "-" before the domain
you don't want to see. For example:

html a tag -w3schools.com

~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
Why ignore this site in 2020?

~~~
Kliment
because mdn exists and is non-scammy

------
wyck
So basically block 70% of all results from first and second page? Google has
turned into a defective product.

------
pasttense01
The number one thing lots of us don't want for general searches are shopping
results.

------
ycombonator
Geeksforgeeks and tutorialspoint are low quality offshore content farms.

------
pot8n
Thank you for this addon. Google should have done this 20 years ago.

------
stormdennis
answers.microsoft.com

I'd blacklist that. Rarely if ever has an actual answer to the question asked
in my experience and for some reason comments seem to get duplicated.

------
wolco
Can it re-add blacklisted URLs? I would pay for that.

~~~
davehcker
Care to elaborate please?

------
sabujp
i absolutely cannot stand geeksforgeeks.com

------
cies
good bye w3schools! (MDN is so much better, thanks Mozilla!)

------
wellthisisgreat
Is there something like this for Chrome?

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
Though I haven't used it, this seems to do something similar:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en)

------
raister
So far, goodbye:

pinterest.com

forbes.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

pinterest.co.uk

ebay.com.au

ebay.ca

pinterest.at

ebay.fr

pickclick.co.uk

pickclick.fr

etsy.com

------
acrossthepond10
would love to have a filter for paywalled articles on google news

------
Acrobatic_Road
or just a search engine that doesn't you know, censor search results.

