Can I block eHow pages from appearing in my Google search results?

November 28, 2010 11:27 AM

When I run Google searches, many of the top results are from eHow. Unfortunately, in my experience these results are almost always unhelpful. Is there a way to prevent eHow pages from appearing in my search results? I use Firefox and am amenable to installing add ons.
posted by jed to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

When you're searching for something, why not just add -ehow to every search? That'll remove any page from ehow from the results.
posted by peacheater at 11:30 AM on November 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There's a FF add-on called "OptimizeGoogle" which seems capable of doing what you want.
posted by jon1270 at 11:38 AM on November 28, 2010

Yep, it works.
posted by jon1270 at 11:42 AM on November 28, 2010

Best answer: I used Google Custom Search to accomplish this at work (in that case, to filter out useless results form a pay site).
posted by trunk muffins at 12:19 PM on November 28, 2010

-site:ehow.com
posted by empath at 1:32 PM on November 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions, MeFites. I'm aware of the -ehow option, but would prefer not to have to put it in every search. I'll check out Google Custom Search and OptimizeGoogle.
posted by jed at 2:02 PM on November 28, 2010

How about trying out a different search engine? The new Blekko omits content/link farm content from its results by default. For a general overview, see Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live.
posted by acridrabbit at 6:55 PM on November 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

OptimizeGoogle is great! I hacked an existing greasemonkey script to remove certain domains (I'm looking at you, eHow), for posterity:

// ==UserScript==
// @name          Google hated domains remover
// @namespace     http://www.google.com
// @description	  Removes results for any page from google which is listed in banned
// @include       http://www.google.*/search*
// @include       http://*.google.*/search*
// ==/UserScript==

// Hacked from arantius' "Google about.com remover"
//   http://www.arantius.com/misc/greasemonkey/

var banned = [
	"roseindia.net",
	//"experts-exchange.com",
	"weask.us",
	"ehow.com",
	"efreedom.com",
	"6api.com",
	"kods.net",
	"questionhub.com",
	"expert.tc",
	];
var str = '';
for(var i=0; i<banned.length; i++) {
	if(i != 0) {
		str = str + ' | ';
	}
	str = str + '//a[contains(@href, "' + banned[i] + '")]/..';
}
var results=document.evaluate(str, 
	document, null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var result=null, i=0; result=results.snapshotItem(i); i++) {
	result.parentNode.parentNode.style.display='none';
}

posted by beerbajay at 1:06 AM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]