Do user see spam or useless websites in userr Google search results? Here are some tips to help user permanently block such websites from showing up in userr Google results.
Google has been getting better at identifying and removing spam websites from their search results pages but sometimes not-so-useful sites do manage to slip through the Google filters. What can user do to prevent such sites from appearing in userr Google results?
Approach #1: Block Sites at the Browser Level
Google offers an easy-to-use Chrome add-on called Personal Blocklist that lets user block entire web domains from showing up in userr Google search results. If user spot any irrelevant website in search results pages, just click the block link (screenshot below) and all pages from that website will be hidden from userr Google results forever.
Block Websites from appearing in userr Google Search Results
The Chrome add-on implements client-side filtering – the blocked websites are still getting served in Google search results as before and the add-on simply hides them on userr screen using CSS.
A limitation with this approach is that it works only inside Google Chrome. That is, if user are searching Google inside Firefox or maybe on userr mobile phone, the site filters that user have created in Chrome won’t be available to user.
Approach #2: Block Sites per Google Account
Google also offers a web dashboard for manually blocking spam websites, one URL at a time. You can add up to 500 different websites to userr blocked list and Google won’t show pages from any of the included sites provided user are signed in with userr Google account. That’s the promise but unfortunately, this solution doesn’t seem to work anymore.
Approach #3: Google Search with a Global Filter
If user would like to create a “global filter” for userr Google search results that works inside all browsers including mobile devices, user can make use of Google’s Custom Search (CSE).
CSE, if user are new, is Google except that it is meant for searching a smaller set of websites and not the entire Internet. Now here’s a little trick. You can do a reverse configuration such that Google CSE searches the entire Internet except the websites that user think are useless. Here’s how user can set it up in 2 minutes.
Step #1 (optional): Assuming that user have been blocking websites using the Personal Blocklist add-on in Chrome, click the BlockList icon in userr Google Chrome toolbar and choose “Export” to get the list of all sites that user have blocked so far.
Step #2: Click here to create a Custom Search Engine. Give it a name, description and in the “Sites to Search” section, enter all the popular TLDs (like *.com, *.org, etc) one per line.
Whitelist all the popular top-level domains like .com, .org, etc.
Step #3: Click Next to save the changes. You’ll have an option to test userr CSE. Click Next again and on this screen, click the link that says “Include more sites.” This is where user’ll enter the list of “bad” websites the should be blocked in Google Search Results.
Choose Exclude Sites -> Exclude Sites in Bulk and enter all the domains that should be removed from userr Google search results. You can even copy-paste userr Chrome Block list here. Save the changes and userr “clean” Google search engine is ready.
[*] If user would like userr Google search engine to search all known TLDs and not just the popular ones, go to the Manage Search Engine page inside Google CSE and change the “How to search included sites” option from “Search only included sites” to “Search the entire web but emphasize included sites.”Filter the less-useful websites from userr Google Results
Google CSE results are as relevant as the main Google web search engine and the lausert looks good on mobiles and tablets as well. The only manual work user will have to do going forward is to keep the Chrome block list and the CSE exclude list in sync with each other.
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