Yesterday a third design was spotted that combines the black bar with the menu structure of the single menu bar.

The new bar displays Google’s most popular services directly again on the bar for quick access. The More link leads to additional services. Users of the gray bar design will notice that the black bar has been moved on top of the design. Everything else, with the exception of the Google logo menu has remained the same.

The Google Operating System blog has posted instructions on how to enable the new Google bar design.

• Open google.com in your web browser of choice.
• In Google Chrome, press Ctrl-Shift-J
• In Mozilla Firefox press Ctrl-Shift-K
• In Internet Explorer press F12 and select console
• Paste the following code into the form

document.cookie="PREF=ID=381502750b6e9119:U=aaee74aefea7315a:FF=0:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1328391998:LM=1328392000:S=yPtlCgLbEnezu5b4; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();

• Press enter and close the console again.
• Local users need to replace the domain in the information (google.com) with the country code domain, e.g. (google.de)

The page should refresh automatically, and you should see the new layout on the Google page. Please note that it will only be active for as long as the cookie remains on your system.

Users who want to return to the old Google homepage layout can repeat the steps, by loading the following code in the console.

document.cookie="PREF=; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();

My personal opinion? Google should give users more choice when it comes to the services that are displayed on the homepage. I’m for instance not using Google News, so why should it be there that prominently on the page? Google furthermore needs to select a design and stick with it, instead of confusing users with different designs and layouts. Some users, depending on the browser they use to access Google, have reported that they are seeing different layouts on the same computer.

What’s your take on this, and what’s your favorite bar so far?

Today when you click on a file link in Google Search that is pointing to MediaFire, you are redirected to the error page http://www.mediafire.com/error.php?errno=381.

It reads:

The indexed link is unavailable.

The link that was indexed is currently set to a non-indexing state and cannot be accessed.

If you copy the link url and paste it directly in your browser’s address bar, you are taken to the download page from where you can download the file normally. It is also interesting to note that downloads are still working if you are using Bing Search instead of Google.

It is not clear at this point if Google Search is the only referrer that has been blocked by Mediafire, or if there are other sites that have been blocked as well by the file hosting service.

Another thing that is unclear is whether this has been an intentional move by the site, or if it is a technical issue that will be resolved at a later point in time. It does not make lots of sense from a legal point of view, unless law enforcement agencies are using Google exclusively for their research.

Users who find files that they cannot download should copy and paste the url into their browser’s address bar to download it. It is alternatively possible to install an extension like Refcontrol to modify the referrer for sites that are blocked by Mediafire.

Lets discuss the move in the comments.

Update: Download links are working again. It seems to have been a technical issue after all.

Depending on the terms you search for, you may end up with results from YouTube, Google News, Google+, Google Images or other products that Google has hard coded into the search results. That’s fine if those results are relevant to the search term. More often than not though, they are not.

Engineers from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking companies have now released a Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet and browser extension to make Google’s search results more impartial and relevant at the same time.

Once you have dragged the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar or bookmarks folder you can run it whenever you have performed a Google search.

Below are two screenshots. The first is a copy of a standard search for AT&T on Google, the second how the page looks like once you have run the bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet has replaced the Google+ listing with the more relevant Twitter account listing. We need to look at how relevancy is computed to make sure that it does not just favor other social networking sites over Google. According to the developers, their tool checks Google Search for the term to select the first social networking listing in the standard results as the most relevant term. Standard result means a page that Google has not hardcoded into the search results.

The bookmarklet will also analyze people and pages results on the right side with relevant results

and the suggestions when you start typing a name into the search form.

It is interesting to note that the bookmarklet enables the feature for the session, and not only for the current page that you are on. Results are automatically adjusted if you use Google Search functionality on the same page again.

Is this making the search results on Google more relevant? The answer should be yes if you look at a pool of users. When it comes down to the individual user, it depends solely on that user’s preference. Some users do not want to see social signals in the results at all, others may be using Google+ exclusively or a mixture of services. Users should not turn this into a Google vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Whatever fight. Instead, they should look at what they want their search results to be and voice that opinion loud and clear.

How they do that? By switching to another search engine for instance if they feel that Google Search has deteriorated in the past year. If users flock to other search engines, then Google may be willing to reanalyze their latest strategies and may return to impartial search results.

The developers have created a browser extension for Google Chrome that automates the process. You can download it only directly from the Focus on the user website.

Here is a video demonstration of the bookmarklet.

Keep in mind that while not officially released by Facebook or Twitter, it still has their stamp all over it. I suggest you read Giga Om’s comment on this.

What’s your take on this? Voice your opinion in the comments.

The company basically stated that an algorithmic change was launched that analyzes the ad to content ratio above the fold. Sites that do not have much content above the fold can be affected by this change, according to Google. What does affected mean exactly? They are pushed down in the search results in favor of sites that have a better user experience.

Sites that display ads to a normal degree are not affected by the change.

I personally have two issues with the announcement.

Parameters

Google did not provide information about the parameters that they look at. What’s missing?

• The definition of what the company considers to be an ad
• What Google considers to be a normal ad ratio above the fold
• The screen resolutions they use to calculate that ad to content ratio
• If popup ads or interstitial ads are also considered by the change

This leaves webmasters again with the nagging feeling that they may be affected by the change, even though they are likely not.

Not everyone is equal

The second aspect weights more heavily in my eyes. Take a look at the following screenshot and let me know if you would consider this a bad ad to content ratio on the page.

Please note that this screenshot shows a 1000 to 800 resolution, and that your experience may differ depending on a number of factors.

And now read Matt Cutts’ announcement again:

If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience

Is Matt saying that Google Search is not offering a good user experience? I think he does. Lets discuss in the comments.

The biggest issue for many is the fact that the majority of features cannot be disabled if you do not want to use them. It is either an all or nothing deal, unless you happen to run across programs that make the necessary modifications for you.

NoCrap Google Search Bar injects itself on Google Search pages. You will see two search forms on the Google homepage, and only the NoCrap search form on results pages.

You will notice two things right from the start:

• The Google header bar has been removed. A click on the x icon hides the custom search form so that the standard header is again displayed on the screen.
• Menus to customize the search are displayed right beneath the search form. Here you can select the number of results per page, safe or unsafe search, whether you would like to only see specific result types (e.g. images or video), the time span, language and format.

You can configure default parameters in the userscript settings.

You may also notice that searches are always enclosed in double quotes automatically which ensures that those terms need to be on all result pages.

NoCrap Google Search on top of that does away with many of the annoyances that one encounters on Google Search:

• Autocomplete disabled
• Google Instant disabled
• Live Preview disabled
• Personalized web search disabled
• Cache links show up again in the search results
• Links can now be copied directly, Google link manipulations on copy or mouse over are removed.

The search parameters do still work even if you clear all Google cookies. Users who have used custom parameters in the past know that clearing the Google cookies will reset the preferences to their default values.

NoCrap Google Search Bar is a useful userscript for Google users who want more control over their search result pages.

The link to Ghacks in Google Search for instance should be http://www.ghacks.net/ and not http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ghacks&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ghacks.net%2F&ei=MooNT_vzE5GnsgaegJXbBA&usg=AFQjCNEbVP7B0UnFl1Q9J0q_Vbl9uYoYOw which it is when you copy the link to the clipboard.

Here are two options to display direct website links in Google Search:

Google Search link fix

The Firefox add-on modifies all link targets in the Google search results and all other Google properties where this behavior can be observed, so that they point to the direct web address.

Just install the extension in the Firefox web browser, a restart is not required. If you are on Google Search currently you need to reload the page or run a new search before the extension starts replacing the links.

Firefox users can download the extension from Mozilla’s official Add-ons repository for the browser.

Don’t track me Google

This is a userscript that does the exact same thing the Firefox extension does. It is compatible with Firefox and Google Chrome, and maybe other web browsers as well. The userscript in addition hides the referral link so that sites you visit do not know where you came from.

Chrome users can install the userscript right away, while Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey or Scriptish add-on first before they can do the same thing.

The userscript can be downloaded and installed over at the official Userscripts website.

You get information about the number of personal results integrated in the search results on top. The right displays Google+ profiles from Facebook employees, and below the Facebook site listing is the first personalized entry that was moved up there.

If you look closer you will realize that almost everything that has been added is related to Google+. The personalized results are taken from Google+, the people and pages listing is taken from that site as well, as are the personal results as they are based on what your Google+ friends have “liked” in the past.

You may also notice that search suggestions will now display Google+ names directly in the window.

All personalized results are highlighted with a blue icon in front of the page title. You can turn off Search plus Your World with a click on the Hide personal results button. There are other options that you can make use of if you thing that personalized search has gone to far.

Log out before running searches on Google or use another search engine like Bing, Duck Duck Go or Ixquick.

Personal results can also be turned off in the Search settings. Click on the options button and select Search Settings there.

Locate Personal results on the new screen and switch from “use personal results” to “do not use personal results”. Click on the save button afterwards.

Google is starting to promote their Google+ service heavily with the integration of results from that social networking service in the results.

Why I do not like it? I think that the majority of information added by personalized results are not telling me anything that I do not already know. And pages favored by friends are not necessarily better than other pages. Say you search for movies to watch on Google, and one of the first results is a personalized result where several of your female friends have voted for the movie Twilight. Does that mean that you will like the movie as well?

You now have to think about the people who voted for the result to make a decision whether this search result is helping you out or not.

Another issue that I have with person.lized search is that I always feel that the search engine is holding back on me. Instead of displaying the “real” results, it displays crippled results on the first page.

I personally have disabled Google Search plus your World right away. What about you? On a related note, all Google Search pages are now making use of HTTPS by default. You can still switch to HTTP search manually though

Today Google announced that they have started to roll out a new look for some of their most popular properties. The change affects Google Search, News, Maps, Translate, Gmail and other products that have not been mentioned explicitly in the announcement on the Google Blog site.

The new design does away with the black bar and replaces it with a much smaller header element that is called the gray bar. This bar consists of three different regions. First the Google logo on the left incorporating a drop-down menu, a search for the particular Google product the user is currently using and a third area with sharing and account related links.

The down arrow on the right side of the Google logo leads to a product list. This makes it possible to navigate to other Google properties with two clicks from any of the supported Google product pages. This works even if the user is not logged into any Google account.

Search is now displayed in the middle of the gray bar. Users can use it to search for information provided by the Google Product they are currently using.

The sharing section finally confirms Google’s intention to push the Google+ social networking service. It is the only Google product that is linked prominently in the gray bar. The account picture finally displays links to the user’s Google profile, Google+ as well as general account and privacy related settings. a new Switch account option has been added to give users an option to switch accounts more conveniently.

The changes are being rolled out currently with no information when they may reach all users. I for one see the black bar on all Google properties and all web browsers at the moment.

You can follow the link above to read up on the new search tool. You can access Verbatim with a click on More search tools in the left sidebar of a Google search result’s page, and the selection of Verbatim thereafter. Another possibility is to add the parameter &tbs=li:1 to the end of the query to trigger a verbatim search.

It took less than a day for someone to create a Google Verbatim userscript that places the option more prominently on all Google Search pages. A Yes, really button is added to the Google search form both on the Google homepage and on search result pages. Users can still click on the standard button to perform a search, or they can click on the new Yes, really button to run a verbatim search instead.

The name Yes, really answers the unasked question whether you really want to search for all the words entered in the search form. The userscript works fine under the Firefox web browser with Scriptish installed, and in the Google Chrome web browser. It should run equally fine for users who have the Greasemonkey extension installed instead. I have not tested the Google Verbatim userscript in the Opera browser or other web browsers.

Interested users can download Gooverbatim from the official Userscripts website.

Google’s suggestion to use quotes “” for exact searches works most of the time but not all the time. Even searches in quotes are sometimes “interpreted” by Google. While the search giant may get it right some of the times, they fail at other times. The removal of the + search operator, some say to make way for the Google+ search options that have been implemented in Google Search, has made it even more difficulty to get exact results in the search results. Up until now, users had no real options to force Google to only return results for the query that they typed in.

In particular, Google may make automatic spelling corrections, personalize search, use synonyms and similar terms, searches for words with the same stem and making some terms optional. That’s a lot of manipulation, especially when users want to find exact matches only.

This changes with the new Verbatim search option that is rolled out right now by Google. The new option is hidden in the left sidebar menu and becomes only available after a click on More search tools there.

The feature is being rolled out and will be available to all Google users in the coming days. Webmasters should also take note that Google announced that they will apply “similar ideas directly” to their algorithms.

The Google Verbatim search option is a welcome addition that experienced users will come to like.

Users who want to force Google to search for the exact search term directly can add &tbs=li:1 to the query to do just that.

What’s your take on Google Verbatim? Let me know in the comments. You can read the official announcement at the Google Inside Search blog.

The Remove Google +1 buttons from the search result userscript removes the +1 buttons from all google.com search result pages. The userscript works on all google search domains, including google.com but also country specific domains such as google.de, google.co.uk and google.fr.

The userscript uses a wildcard as the domain extension to include all google.* domains so that it should work on all google-dot-something properties.

Please note that you will still see Google +1 results in the search engines if you or your Google+ friends have recommended a particular site that is displayed.

The second feature of the userscript is the removal of the preview link that is displayed when you hover with the mouse cursor over a result in the results listing.

The removal of the previews in Google search may lead to a problem for users who need to access the cached and similar links that have been placed there by Google (see Where Are Google Search Cached And Similar Links? for all details)

Webmasters and users who need access to those links can install the Resurrect Google Cache & Related links userscript to move them back right to their original positions in the search results.

Removing the Google+ buttons in the search results removes some of the noise that Google added lately to the result listings. The developer noted that the remaining Google+ information (if you or your friends +1′ed a link) are not removed because of performance issues “when Google is using Ajax”. The userscript is compatible with Firefox and Google Chrome.

Are you a Google+ user? If so, what’s your take on the social networking site? Activities seemed to have died off a bit lately, or is that only my impression?

Microsoft has created the Firefox with Bing website to distribute a special version of the Firefox web browser. This particular version of Firefox ships with Bing set as the browser’s homepage, default search engine and search provider in Firefox’s address bar.

Internet users who click on the Get Firefox with Bing button are redirected to a download on the Mozilla website. The download pops up automatically, the download itself is the latest stable Firefox browser version. Users who install the latest stable version of Firefox this way will use Bing instead of Google in the browser.

This does not really change anything else. Firefox versions available for download directly at Mozilla will still ship with Google as the default search provider. And that’s the place where most Firefox downloads happen.

It is up to Microsoft to promote Firefox with Bing, and it remains to be seen if a lot of users will take up Bing’s offer and download the Bing Firefox version from the promo page.

Existing Firefox users can install the Bing add-on for the browser instead to add the same functionality. If you do not want to install and add-on for that, you can head over to the Mycroft Project website instead to pick search providers from the list there.

So, Mozilla is teaming up with Microsoft, and probably rewarded handsomely for it. Some may see the move as a first step to become less dependent on Google, which in my opinion is a path that Mozilla should have taken a long time ago.

You can read the official announced over at the Bing Community blog.

What’s your take on this?

Google first started comparing and later on using the information provided by Personal Blocklist users into their search engine ranking algorithm (which added another weapon to the arsenal of black hats).

A month later Google began to add options to block sites from the search results directly. Users who visited a site from the Google results and clicked on back in the first seconds of visiting that site were greeted with a “block all domain results” link under that site’s search engine listing.

Yesterday Google made the announcement that users of the Personal Blocklist extension for Google Chrome can now export the blocked site data to their personal Google account.

For that they need to click on the red extension icon in the Chrome interface to bring up the list of blocked sites.

A click on Export opens a second window where the data can be copied to the Clipboard or exported to Google. Users who select the second option will see a prompt asking them if they want to disable the Chrome extension after exporting the data to Google. This obviously makes only sense if they stay logged in while searching on Google.

All blocked domains and sites are listed in a review window afterwards. Here it is again possible to unblock some sites so that they won’t be imported into the personal Google account blocklist.

Google users should note that the maximum amount of blocked sites is 500 currently.

The core benefit of moving the blocked sites data from the Chrome extension to the Google account is that the search engine results of the latter will always display ten organic search results.

Google users who do not run Chrome can add domains and sites to their blocked sites list with a click on the Settings icon, selecting Search Settings and clicking on Manage blocked sites in the new window. (thanks Venkat)

Google users who use the + operator nowadays for their searches will see a notification at the top notifying them that the “+ operator has been replaced” and that they now have to use double quotation marks to search for an exact word or phrase in the search engine.

Instead of searching for technology +news in Google, users now have to use the search phrase technology “news” instead for the desired result.

What if you want multiple exact words or phrases included in your search phrase? Then you need to use double quotation marks for all the terms. Say you want to search for technology and both news and blog included on each of the resulting pages. You would then search Google for technology “news” “blog”.

A Google Rep on the official Google Search support forum confirmed the change.

We’ve made the ways you can tell Google exactly what you want more consistent by expanding the functionality of the quotation marks operator. In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tell Google to match that word precisely. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine "latina"].

We’re constantly making changes to Google Search – adding new features, tweaking the look and feel, running experiments, – all to get you the information you need as quickly and as easily as possible. This recent change is another step toward simplifying the search experience to get you to the info you want.

The question here is if the new method simplifies search. Users now have to use two symbols instead of one to include exact single word searches. It simplifies search if an exact search phrase needs to be included on the websites in the results, as users would have used double quotation marks in this case anyway for the desired result.

Some users on Webmaster World have criticized Google for that move as it can now happen that pages appear in the search results that do not include the exact phrase. While the pages are mostly relevant to the search query itself, it can happen that the exact term does not appear on said pages (e.g. some results for the query “new york train timetable” do not contain that exact phrase.

Webmasters know that Google saves information about every web page googlebot, the company’s search engine crawler, visits. While it was not possible to access the cached link of every website in existence as some did not show up, it was a nice way of accessing a site’s content in case that it was temporarily or permanently unavailable.

Users were also able to access a site’s contents without actually visiting that site. Handy in networks where that particular website was blocked. And the similar link feature was interesting to discover new related websites and services.

Google has revamped the design of the results pages noticeably in past years. They introduced a permanent sidebar on the left linking to specialized searches and advanced filters. The company introduced so called instant previews of every site in the search engines.

Two elements that have been removed in the process are the cached link and similar link. If you visit a Google search results page nowadays you will not find the cached or similar link there anymore. The links are still there but in hiding.

Google has moved cached and similar links to the instant preview area. This is not as intuitive as it may sounds. You need to hover your mouse over a search result to display the instant preview arrows on the right of it. If you now move your mouse over that area you will see a screenshot of how the particular site looked on googlebots last visit.

Displayed near the top next to the page’s title are the cached and similar links. A left-click opens the cached or similar pages in the same tab, a middle-click in a new tab in the web browser.

There you have it. Both features are still there, albeit more hidden and less comfortable to access. (via)

Google as a reaction moved encrypted search to its own subdomain under https://encrypted.google.com/ which seemed to have resolved the issue at that time.

Yesterday Google made the announcement that they will roll out encrypted search for logged in users automatically on google.com. What this means is that logged in Google users will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com/ from http://www.google.com/. Users who are not logged in can access the encrypted page directly or use the standard unencrypted search page instead.

The core benefit of https over http is that the traffic is encrypted. Encryption means that attackers, employees or the user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot spy on the traffic that is exchanged between the user’s PC and the Google server. They do not see what a user does on Google.

The very same people do see the properties that users access after leaving the encrypted Google domain, for instance by clicking on a search result. And Google, obviously, sees it all just like before.

Google will roll out the feature for all of the company’s users in the coming weeks. The move to https could become a serious issue for web statistics applications as webmasters will no longer see the search query that their users came from in web statistic apps.

These information are often used to optimize the site for a particular keyword or group of users.

Google notes that webmasters will still be able to see the top 1000 search queries in Google Webmaster Tools. And with the integration of some Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics, one could wonder if Google is intentionally favoring their own web traffic analysis solution with the move.

Other search engines, Ixquick comes to mind, have been offering encrypted search for some time as well.

What’s your take on encrypted search? (Google Blog, via)

Those information previously were only available after clicking on a site in Google Webmaster Tools which was not a issue for webmasters with one or two domains listed there, but could very well have been a deal-breaker for webmasters with dozens or even hundreds of verified domains. Imagine having to click on each domain to check their health status.

Google yesterday made the announcement that they have redesigned the Webmaster Tools start page. Instead of just displaying a list of domains there, the page is now showing site health for every domain right on the homepage.

Webmasters now see on first glance if something’s wrong with one of their websites. Sites with health problems are listed at the top of the list. Warnings may include that malware has been detected on the site, that important pages have been removed or that the robots.txt file is blocking important pages.

Each site is displayed with a thumbnail screenshot and link to manage the site in Webmaster Tools. A click on a problem opens additional information about the problem detected on the site.

Susan Moskwa, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, notes that Google is using the display currently only for accounts with less than 100 sites listed. Webmasters with more than 100 sites will see site health at the top of the Dashboard for each site. While I’m not 100% certain it seems to suggest that accounts with more than 100 domains still have to use the old way of verifying that everything’s all right with their websites.

Google plans to expand the site health notifications in the future to include additional issues (currently only malware, removed urls, blocked urls are reported).

I personally like the new layout, as it speeds up the process of making sure that no potential issues are missed when using Webmaster Tools.

Users who download software from download.com now download an installer first that comes bundled with a toolbar. This web installer then offers to download and install the installer of the program the user wanted to download initially. Users basically download an installer that downloads an installer to install the software they wanted to download.

I have spoken to some software developers who made the decision to pull their software from Download.com, or at least contacted Cnet to remove their application from the software repository.
now on. I’d like to introduce a few options for those users to remove download.com results from the Google search engine.

Google Account

Google users who are logged in when they use the search engine can block up to 500 different domains in their account options. All they need to do is to open the following link to add or remove domains from their blocklist.

Blocked domains are displayed on the very same page. A search on Google removes all domain references. Google still displays ten results, which basically means that results from the second or third page are moved to the first page to fill up the slots.

Not all users want to be logged in to their Google account though when they search on the site.

Third Party Tools

Third party tools have the advantage that you do not need to be logged into your Google account to block domains in the search results. Their disadvantage is that the blocked domains are removed but not replaced with other results. This could in worst case mean that not a single result is displayed on a search results page.

Here are a few extensions and tools to block domains in the Google search engine:

• Personal Blocklist (by Google) – The Google Chrome extension adds a Block domain option next to each search result.
• Google Hit Hider by Domain (Search Filter / Block Sites) – A userscript for the Firefox web browser to block unwanted domain in the Google search results.
• Search Noise Reduction for Opera – A userscript for the Opera web browser. Works not only in Google but also Bing and Yandex.

You may have heard of other tools or extensions to block domains from the search results in Google. Please let me know about them in the comments.

While it is possible to use the date filter in the left sidebar menu it is not the most comfortable of choices. Still, the selected filter date is set and new searches will filter results accordingly. The Firefox extension Google Date Keeper adds a date filter menu to the search bar, from where it is easier accessible.

The date filter menu is added to every Google results page in the Firefox web browser. It is however not added to the Google Search homepage (exactly like Google has done with their sidebar date filter).

The date filters are identical, with the exception that the Google Date Keeper menu does not support a custom date range on first glance. The Firefox add-on supports shortcuts to select a date filter with the keyboard. But that only works if the menu is selected. If it is not selected, the key will be automatically added to the search form in the browser.

It would have been nice if the developer would have added better hotkeys to allow date filter switching without activating the filter menu first. The add-on has one ace up it sleeves that makes it more useful than Google’s date selector in the sidebar. Users can modify the date range after they have made a selection in the menu. The filter can be customized by pressing a number after making a selection. This way it is possible to search the results for the last six months (by selecting month and then tapping on 6 on the keyboard), the last five days or the past 7 hours.

This is more or less the custom filter integrated natively into the selection menu.

Firefox users who want to try out Google Date Keeper can download the restartless add-on from the official Mozilla Add-on repository.

The example below is probably not the best, as it misses other Google properties and services (like news, videos, Google places) that are usually included in the search results.

I have switched my search engine to Bing some time ago. I do have to admit though that I do not use one search engine exclusively. If I cannot find what I’m looking for on Bing, I head over to Google.com to search there. And that’s usually when I come in contact with the ads on those pages.

Removing Ads On Google

I first tried to find a userscript but there was none that was up to date in this regard. My second stop was the Firefox add-on repository where I did not find an awful lot of Google specific ad blocking solutions.

The one thing that I did not think about at first was the most obvious choice in this regard: Adblock Plus. I do not use the Firefox ad blocker as I’m perfectly fine with the NoScript add-on. NoScript on the other hand does not block the ads of the Google search engine.

After installing Adblock Plus the same search results page on Google looked like this:

All of the ads were gone, without doing any form of customization first. Perfect.

Google Chrome users can download and install a comparable solution called Adblock for Chrome. It basically does the same thing.

Alternatives

The custom Google search engine Scroogle is an alternative. It comes without the ads and tracking that users are subject to on Google. Results may not look as pretty as on Google but that’s usually not a problem.

Closing Words

It feels kinda strange that there are not more userscripts and extensions to block ads on Google, especially so if you have monitored the increasing number of ads on the search result pages.

I also know that this must sound ridiculous to some. A webmaster who earns his living from ads is advising users to block ads on Google.com. Ideally, I would hope that those of you who install or use ad blockers have the courtesy to disable those blockers on my site. I know that some of you do and I’m thankful for that.

Adblocker users can click on the icon in the left corner of the browser window in Firefox to bring up the configuration menu. Here they can select to disable the add-on on the current site.

Some of the ads on Ghacks are impression based, which means that I earn a penny or two even if you do not click on them or interact with them in another way.