How to Avoid Answers.com
January 2, 2011 12:51 PM   Subscribe

Are there any scripts/tricks/bright ideas for how to filter out search results from answers.com, ask.com, yahoo answers and other worthlessly crowdsourced Q&A forums that always seem to make up the first page of anything I google? Present company excluded, of course!

I know there are things I could manually punch in, but I'd like to find something that does this automatically, if such a thing exists.
posted by StopMakingSense to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Try using this bookmarklet

javascript:q=""+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt("Search%20terms%20...").replace(/\s\+/g,"%252B");if(q!=null)location="http://www.google.com/search?q="+q.replace(/\s+/g,"+")+" -inurl:(answers.com|ask.com|kelkoo|bizrate|pixmania|dealtime|pricerunner|dooyoo|pricegrabber|pricewatch|resellerratings|ebay|shopbot|comparestoreprices|ciao|unbeatable|shopping|epinions|nextag|buy|bestwebbuys)";void(0);"
posted by Lanark at 1:29 PM on January 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


It's possible in Firefox, but it does require a bit of web/url know-how.

Right-click on the text field at google.com, and select "Add a keyword for this search." Pick a keyword like "g". This creates a quick-search bookmark; as long as it's in your bookmarks you can type "g (query)" into your location bar (NOT the search box) and hit enter, and it'll search google. You can do this with pretty much any search engine (any GET-based query) and make as many as you want; e.g. to search forums, etc.

To add conditions like -site: or -inurl:, you need to edit the bookmark's location field and add them to the URL manually. Look for the "%s", which indicates where your query will be inserted, and add them after that.
posted by pengale at 1:37 PM on January 2, 2011


You tagged this with greasemonkey, so I assume you're using firefox. In which case I would suggest OptimizeGoogle.
posted by inkyz at 2:33 PM on January 2, 2011


https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jiicbcimbjppjbckmoknagndlhjbeohb

I ran across this one earlier today. It is for chrome, though.
posted by ydant at 6:59 PM on January 2, 2011


Best answer: If you use FireFox, try OptimizeGoogle. It's a rewrite of the older, abandoned CustomizeGoogle plugin.

Install, restart FireFox.
Click OptimizeGoogle's options, then select Filter from the list on the left.

You can add lists of web sites or domains you want to exclude from searches.

www.expertsexchange. com is another site I always block.
posted by flutable at 3:10 PM on January 4, 2011


Best answer: I saw this today and thought of this thread: Search Engine Blacklist extension for Chrome
posted by misterbrandt at 11:42 AM on January 11, 2011


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